64 isle women inmates
By Gregg K. Kakesako
moved from Texas
Star-BulletinHawaii has transferred 64 women inmates from a Texas jail to an Oklahoma facility that is more secure and has better programs, officials said.
The women were taken by bus yesterday from Crystal City County Correctional Center to the Central Oklahoma Correctional Facility in McLoud, Okla., located east of Oklahoma City.
The 860-bed McLoud facility is a new prison run by Correctional Services Corp., which earlier this year took over the operations of the three jails that hold 600 of Hawaii's 900 inmates housed on the mainland.
Ted Sakai, Hawaii State Public Safety Department spokesman, said the transfer was done because the Oklahoma facility is a prison and has "better programs."
The Crystal City facility is a renovated county jail.
The women inmates from Hawaii were imprisoned since May 1997 at the Crystal City facility, which is located 121 miles southwest of San Antonio, near the Texas-Mexico border.
The Crystal City jail was managed by the Austin-based Bobby Ross Group, which until recently also ran the Newton County Correctional Center and the Dickens County Correctional Center, which housed 535 male inmates from Hawaii.
The Florida-based Correctional Services Corp. now manages all three of the facilities.
The U.S. Justice Department has criticized the Dickens facility, where 100 inmates from Hawaii are now imprisoned, as being inadequate.
Yesterday, 36 of the 435 inmates at the Newton County Correctional Center were moved to the Mansfield Law Enforcement Center, a 240-bed facility run by the city of Mansfield, Texas.
Sakai said the transfer was made because the Mansfield facility is "more appropriate housing" for inmates serving time for murder, rape and other serious crimes.
An additional 15 inmates will be transferred from Newton at a later date.
That will leave 385 inmates in the Newton facility, located 98 miles north of Beaumont near the Louisiana border.
The state has criticized the Newton facility as being inappropriate to house the Hawaii inmates because of its dormitory housing arrangement rather than individual cells.
