Isle inmates eligible for
parole will return from Texas
within month

The state is 'trying tocoordinate
a way to bring them back at one time'

By Gregg K. Kakesako
Star-Bulletin

Twenty-one Hawaii inmates are eligible for parole but won't be freed from their Texas prison cells until the state can find them transportation back to the islands.

Hawaii Paroling Authority Chairman Al Beaver said that after meeting with Public Safety officials last week, it was agreed that these 21 inmates will be returned to Halawa Correctional Facility from Newton County Correctional Facility within a month.

"However, that doesn't mean that all of them will be released as soon they get back," he added.

"There are other conditions that have to be met before an inmate can be paroled."

These conditions, he said, include having a place where the inmate plans to reside or whether the inmate needs to be enrolled in a drug rehabilitation program.

At least five of the 21 have been eligible for parole since June.

Dan Foley, a civil rights attorney who has several clients incarcerated at Newton, takes issue with Public Safety's decision not to bring the prisoners immediately back to Hawaii.

"There's a due-process issue involved here," said Foley, who said the fault lies with the Department of Public Safety.

"Public Safety wasn't thinking ahead," he said. "They knew these guys were going there. They knew that several months before a person's minimum sentence was served, they would be eligible for parole."

Foley said the department is "jeopardizing" the out-of-state transfer program with such "haphazard planning." He also contended the state is spending more money to keep prisoners in Texas by not returning them here as soon as they are ready for parole.

He was referring to figures saying the state was paying Texas $41 daily to house Hawaii inmates. "That amounts to as much as $25,000," Foley added.

But Public Safety Department spokesman Ted Sakai said it would be too expensive to bring inmates back individually, and "we are trying to coordinate a way to bring them back at one time."

Beaver said under a new deal with the department, inmates in Texas will be paroled on a quarterly basis. For the next group of eligible parolees, that'll be Jan. 28.