By Ken Ige, Star-Bulletin
Acting Lt. Patrick Murphy said he is pleased with the
new dormitory at Waiawa Correctional Facility.

$2.5 million dorms
to ease Waiawa
prison crowding

Inmates from Halawa and
from a tent at Waiawa
will move in

By Gregg K. Kakesako
Star-Bulletin

The state's overcrowded prisons will receive some relief next week when the Waiawa Correctional Facility begins moving inmates to its new $2.5 million, 200-bed dormitories.

The dorms, in four residential quads on the 192-acre facility, will increase Waiawa's capacity to 334 inmates.

The prison now has 234 inmates.

About 100 inmates will be moved from Halawa Correctional Facility over the next five weeks, Waiawa Warden Philip Tumminello said.

Fifty inmates will be relocated from a tent at Waiawa. Use of the tent had to be discontinued because it has no sprinkler system.

Tumminello said other Waiawa inmates will be moved from two other locations at the Leeward Oahu minimum-security prison.

Each of the new residential quads is made up of two barracks sections housing 48 inmates in bunk beds, and two disabled prisoners in single beds, according to acting Lt. Patrick Murphy. Each quad also has a television day room able to accommodate 80 inmates.

By Ken Ige, Star-Bulletin
Acting Lt. Patrick Murphy, seen from the perspective
of an inmate's bunk, shows part of the new dormitory space
that will add 200 beds to the Waiawa Correctional Facility.

Eight-foot-high partitions separate the living spaces, which each hold two bunk beds, a stool and a desk.

The facility's opening was supposed to have been in January, but was delayed because a subcontractor installed a different type of sprinkler head.

Tumminello said the old sprinkler heads met existing fire codes, but posed a security risk because they were exposed.

There are no immediate plans to add more buildings at Waiawa, Tumminello said, because it has reached its maximum capacity based upon its existing water and sewage systems.

Acting state Public Safety Director Ted Sakai said the only other two prison expansion projects involve the Women's Correctional Facility in Kailua and the Oahu Community Correctional Center in Kalihi.

The women's facility is ready to open a new 84-bed facility soon, Sakai said, while OCCC, which moved a step closer to cutting its ties from a federal oversight decree this week, is seeking a permit to build a 168-bed annex.

The women's prison expansion would increase its capacity to 268, while OCCC with the new annex would be able to house more than 1,300 inmates.