Talk Story
CLASS, come to order, please. Put your books away and settle down. That means you, too, Mr. Souki -- stop poking Mr. Hemmings and pay attention. I don't care if he jabbed you first. A few lessons about
state’s prison situationWe'll start with a math problem. If Hawaii pays $50 a day per inmate to put 1,200 of its 5,100 inmates in privately operated prisons in Minnesota, Arizona and Oklahoma, how many taxpayer dollars are leaving the state each year to pay out-of-state prisons?
Hmm, $21.9 million a year? Yes, that's correct, Mr. Say.
Now, someone tell me, if it costs taxpayers $85 dollars a day to keep a prisoner in a state-run Hawaii prison, how much do we save by sending prisoners to the mainland? Ms. Marumoto?
That's correct, Hawaii saves $6.6 million dollars a year by exporting prisoners. I guess that means Hawaii doesn't have a prison problem anymore, right Mr. Bunda?
No, that's incorrect. The state's prisons are still overcrowded. They exceed the architects' designs and the planned capacities for staff and services.
Speaking of staff and services, how many jobs and how much business does Hawaii export along with those 1,200 inmates? That's right, Ms. Hanabusa, we don't know, but if we send roughly 25 percent of our prisoners to the mainland it must be a lot.
Besides that, how much prison construction work have we financed in other states with the $21.9 million we send them? That's right, Mr. Kawamoto, we don't know that either. But we do know that money didn't buy any prison construction work here in the islands, right?
At a time when unemployment in Hawaii is soaring and we're looking desperately to diversify our tourism-dependent economy, is buying prison services elsewhere really a good idea?
THINK about it, class. Suppose we welcomed the private corrections industry to the state. Could that possibly lower our cost per inmate, keep corrections payroll dollars from leaving the state, increase construction spending and generate additional economic activity for local vendors selling services, food and supplies to the prison?
An article in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal examined the private prison industry, which had fallen on hard times until recently because of declining crime rates. Now, however, private prison companies are prospering.
This is because tougher drug and immigration laws have the federal Bureau of Prisons scurrying to contract for new low- and minimum-security beds to house a burgeoning federal inmate population.
In fact, the number of federal inmates is expanding at 7.5 percent per year and BOP, as it is known, is looking for places to put them outside the 100-prison federal system.
Unlike other states', Hawaii's prison population is also growing -- we saw a 3.1 percent increase last year.
The BOP has high standards. It pays a private prison operator in California about $60 per inmate per day, $10 more than Hawaii pays mainland jails. That's still $15 less than it costs us to keep inmates in state-run joints, like Halawa or OCCC.
The WSJ article points out that "prisons cost a fortune -- $50 million and up, as a rule of thumb." Building a privately operated prison in Hawaii would generate considerable construction activity, giving the local economy an additional shot in the arm. I can tell that you like that idea, don't you, Mr. Matsuura?
Gov. Ben Cayetano proposes dusting off plans to build a new, privately operated prison in Hilo. "We are looking at some proposals by some people who've done business in California," he said in late September. "One company is willing to come and do it if we provide the land."
What do we call that, class?
That's right, Mr. Slom. We call it a "no-brainer."
John Flanagan is the Star-Bulletin's contributing editor.
He can be reached at: jflanagan@starbulletin.com.