Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.

Mayor Kim proposes
small prison on Big Isle

Kim also favors providing
secure rehabilitation services

---

By Helen Altonn
Star-Bulletin

Big Island Mayor Harry Kim has extended a helping hand to the state's beleaguered prison system with an offer from the county to support a 300- to 400-bed facility.

There's one proviso: It must provide rehabilitation services in a secure environment.

The new mayor of Hawaii County made the proposal in written testimony to two House committees today on a measure related to privately operated correctional facilities.

He didn't attend the hearing of the committees on Public Safety and Military Affairs and Labor and Public Employment.

But he said in his statement that he doesn't think the state should consider construction of a large institutional prison. He said he would support planning a community-based facility "which would serve as a model of a secure rehabilitation center.

"We recognize the need to punish, but we also must recognize the need to rehabilitate."

The state administration has looked at several Big Island sites in the past for a large prison.

But, faced with community opposition and high costs of construction, the Department of Public Safety has been housing about 1,187 of its nearly 5,000 inmates in mainland facilities to deal with overcrowding.

A number of bills are pending in the Legislature concerning privately operated prisons and treatment facilities. Committee chairs Rep. Nestor Garcia (Public Safety) and Terry Nui Yoshinaga (Labor) indicated today they want to look at the entire system rather than piecemeal facilities.

Public Safety Director Ted Sakai said the bill aired today, House Bill 177, would do little to help with overcrowding because it provided for only minimum custody inmates. "We desperately need bed space for our medium custody inmates."

Gary Rodrigues, state director of the United Public Workers, opposed the bill and asked that legislators replace it with Senate Bill 2433 and omit parts that caused Gov. Ben Cayetano to veto it last year.

Sakai said Cayetano vetoed it because of concerns about the extent of union involvement.

Sakai and Rodrigues said they favor a managed competition process that would allow the union to compete against private companies to build and manage prison projects.

"The model we suggested will work in a prison scenario if we're looking at quality, efficiency and cost," Rodrigues said.