A report finds that a
jail housing Hawaii inmates
is in violation of prisoners'
constitutional rights

By Gregg K. Kakesako
Star-Bulletin

The U.S. Justice Department has ruled that a Texas jail that houses 100 inmates from Hawaii and was the scene of a riot in 1997 where a Montana convict was killed is in violation of inmates' constitutional rights.

The critical federal report said Dickens County Correctional Center in Spur, which until recently was managed by the Austin-based Bobby Ross Group, "is not adequately designed or operated for the kind of prisoners who have been confined there."

On May 9, 1997, a Montana inmate was killed in a riot involving at least six inmates from Hawaii. No one has been charged in the case.

The Justice Department report said six of the Hawaii inmates were classified as minimum-custody inmates, but their records "reflected that these predictably dangerous inmates have not been sufficiently identified and segregated from the general inmate population, causing a potential for harm as well as actual harm to other inmates."

Others area of concern include "inadequate inmate supervision, failure to provide sufficient medical staffing, failing to identify and deliver appropriate medical attention to inmate patients with chronic care needs, deficient medical record-keeping practices, insufficient physical accommodations for delivery of medical services, and failure to provide special medical diets to inmates."

State Public Safety Director Keith Kaneshiro referred all comments to Attorney General Margery Bronster, who was unavailable.

House Public Safety Chairman Nestor Garcia said the findings letter "reveals several areas of alleged weakness that need closer scrutiny, especially the areas of inmate classification and in medical and mental health care."

The state also has decided to move 64 Hawaii women inmates from a Texas jail to a new facility that will open in Oklahoma on Aug. 3.

The women now are imprisoned in the Crystal City Correctional Center, located 121 miles southwest of San Antonio near the Mexican border, and will be transferred to the Central Oklahoma Corrections Center for Women.

In a memo given to inmates at Crystal City this week and signed by Kaneshiro, the women were told that they will be the first occupants at the Oklahoma facility and there will be more privacy with "two persons per unit."

Kaneshiro said he won't reveal when the women will be transferred.

He said the state decided to make the change because Oklahoma also has terminated its contract with the Bobby Ross Group, which operates the Texas jail, and will be transferring its 154 inmates to the new facility in McCloud, Okla.

Until recently, the Bobby Ross Group also held the contracts for two other male facilities in Texas which also incarcerate Hawaii inmates: the Newton County Correctional Center and Dickens.

Both Newton and Dickens are now run by the Florida-based Correctional Services Corp., which is opening the new 800-bed women's facility in Oklahoma.

Dan Foley, who represents women inmates at Crystal City and the American Civil Liberties Union, said the women were told by Kaneshiro that the Oklahoma facility was "well equipped, there would be more vocational programs, more substance abuse programs, more jobs would be available and that it is clean and new."

He said the women inmates at Crystal City are "concerned."

"That's because they don't know what to expect," Foley said. "They were told that Crystal City was fine, but the conditions were awful when they got there."

The state transferred 64 women inmates from the Women's Community Correctional Center in Kailua on May 28, 1997, to ease the crowded conditions.

"Now they are settled in," Foley added, "and the conditions are fine, so they are worried."

In June the Women's Correctional Center was dismissed from a federal consent decree, ending 13 years of court supervision.