Isle prisoners
off to Minnesota
The 302 inmates were sent to
By Rod Ohira and Gregg K. Kakesako
the Prairie Correctional Facility
in Appleton, Minn.
Star-BulletinA man once described by a deputy prosecutor as a "walking crime wave" and a former Big Island police sergeant convicted of murder were among the latest group of Hawaii inmates transferred to a private Minnesota corrections facility.
Sources said Anthony DeGuzman, serving time for the 1983 shooting and robbery of an armored-car guard at the former GEM store on Ward Avenue, and Kenneth Wayne Mathison, sentenced to life plus 20 years for kidnapping and murdering his wife in 1992, were among the 302 male inmates sent out last night.
Acting state Public Safety Director Cora Lum last night confirmed the number of transferred inmates but refused to identify them.
The move increased the number of out-of-state detainees to 1,266 total in Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Minnesota. This was the fourth and last transfer authorized by the state Legislature under a program begun in 1995 to ease overcrowding at Hawaii's eight correctional facilities.
The 302 inmates were sent to the Prairie Correctional Facility, operated by Corrections Corp. of America in Appleton, Minn., near the South Dakota border.The medium-security facility, which has a 1,338-bed capacity, is the third Corrections Corp. facility to house Hawaii inmates. In July, Hawaii sent 180 inmates to North Fork Correctional Facility in Sayre, Okla., and another 128 inmates to Hardeman County Correctional Center in Whiteville, Tenn.
The company describes itself as the fifth-largest corrections system in the nation, with 53 percent of U.S. private prisons under its management. It manages 63,000 private prison beds in 76 facilities.
As in the past, inmates left Honolulu last night via chartered jet. But this was the first time corrections officials contracted the Hawaii National Guard to transfer inmates from the Big Island to Oahu before they were sent to the mainland.
The interisland flight, which will be billed to the Department of Public Safety, cost $3,466 in fuel, said Capt. Charles Anthony, National Guard spokesman.
DeGuzman, one of yesterday's transferees, had been serving time for two separate 1982 rape/robberies when he was nabbed in March after prison officials discovered a half-gram of crystal methamphetamine hidden in a light fixture in his cell during a sweep at the Halawa prison. The sweep was triggered by drugs found inside a package of legal documents mailed to DeGuzman.
In April 1997, DeGuzman was awarded $210,000 to settle a lawsuit in which he alleged that he was beaten, taunted and shackled for 44 days by Halawa guards.
The mainland prison group is aware of the type of inmates it is getting, Lum said last night. "They reviewed our files and made the selections," she added.
She described the list as a "mixed bag" and noted "they came from every island and would have been housed at Halawa" if space allowed.
The inmates began boarding the TradeWinds Airlines' Lockheed L-1011 at about 8:15 last night and flew out shortly before 10 p.m.
The transfer of about 150 Halawa inmates reduces the population at the state's only medium-high security facility to its capacity level of about 1,000, Lum said.
"But if you look at the space situation around the state, we're still more than 600 above capacity," she added. "There's a serious need for more medium-security bed space."
