Inmate transfer
doesn’t solve
overcrowding
Even with 302 more
By Gregg K. Kakesako
inmates gone, isle prisons
are over capacity by 500
Star-BulletinSince 1995, Hawaii has spent nearly $50 million -- almost one-third the cost of constructing a new medium-security prison -- on an inmate transfer program, a stopgap measure to relieve overcrowding at its eight prisons.
Annually, Hawaii's prison programs cost the state $100 million, according to state corrections officials.
But even with the transfer of 302 inmates to Minnesota this week, bringing its out-of-state detainee population to 1,199, acting state Public Safety Director Cora Lum acknowledges that Hawaii will be 500 inmates over its operational capacity of 3,200.
This is after expanding the Waiawa Correctional Facility with an extra 200 beds in January and building a new 168-bed annex at the Oahu Community Correctional Center.
Hawaii now has inmates scattered over four states: Minnesota, Texas, Tennessee and Oklahoma.
Gov. Ben Cayetano has begun the environmental impact statement process to build a 2,300-bed medium-security facility near Kulani Correctional Facility outside Hilo on the Big Island.
But that $120 million prison won't be completed until the year 2002.
The funding to continue support for part of Hawaii's out-of-state inmates in Texas runs out next June, and Lum said corrections officials haven't decided whether to seek more money.
Civil rights attorney Dan Foley said the "situation looks bleak."
He noted that when former city Prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro took over as public safety director nearly two years ago, he had no choice but to continue the inmate transfer program because the prisons had more inmates than beds.
"He saw it as the only option he had," Foley added.
The fault lies with the Legislature, he said, because of repeated attempts to impose longer sentencing laws without allocating the necessary resources.
Besides the economic impact of exporting some $20 million a year to other states to house Hawaii inmates, Foley said, there are social impacts caused by "separating parents from children and separating spouses from one another."
"It makes it very difficult to integrate them (inmates) into society," said Foley, who has several clients in Texas prisons.
There also is the problem of oversight, Foley said, noting that Texas' Crystal City jail was not adequately prepared to receive 60 Hawaii female inmates in 1996.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Avery Chumbley said the state's ballooning prison population "shows us the crisis situation we are now facing."
"The long-term solution is to build a new prison," the Maui Democrat said.
Until that prison is completed, Chumbley said, the state may have no other option than to continue sending inmates to the mainland or face the possibility of having the federal government step in and order the release of prisoners to ease overcrowding.
The federal courts have been monitoring the inmate population at Oahu Community Correctional Center since 1984 following a class-action suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.
The state hopes to shed itself of the federal monitoring program by moving more than 100 inmates from OCCC in Kalihi to the Halawa Correctional Facility, dropping the current inmate count of 1,200.
This week's Minnesota transfer was the first to include inmates from the neighbor islands: 13 from Kauai Community Correctional Center; 16 from Kulani; eight from Maui Community Correctional Center; and five from Hawaii Community Correctional Center in Hilo. The 21 inmates from the Big Island were brought to Oahu on a Hawaii National Guard C-130 cargo plane, while the 21 Kauai and Maui inmates were flown here on a commercial jet.
The state on Monday also returned 36 inmates via chartered jet, including seven women from Texas and Oklahoma. Included in that group were 30 inmates who were eligible for parole, including six women; three inmates who face court appearances; and three who had served their maximum terms.
Hawaii has 1,199 inmates, including 56 women, at mainland prisons: Four states house
isle prisoners
Appleton, Minn.: 302 male inmates at Prairie Correctional Facility. Cost: $43 a day.
