Isle inmates on mainland
keep moving farther awayTransferring prisoners saves the state
money, but disconnects them from their families
Despite Gov. Linda Lingle's desire to keep Hawaii's prisoners at home, the state has begun transferring some inmates from one mainland prison to another that is 1,200 miles farther away from home in an effort to save money.
At least one state lawmaker and a community group say that is counterproductive.
Keeping inmates on the mainland makes it more difficult for them to stay in contact with their families and to be reintegrated into society, said Sen. Suzanne Chun Oakland, vice chairwoman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has oversight over the state prison system.
"We should be able to take care of our prisoners here," she said.
An Associated Press survey earlier this year showed 11 states export large numbers of inmates to other states -- a total of about 8,700 -- and Hawaii provides nearly a quarter of the 6,000 transfer inmates in private prisons run by Corrections Corporation of America.
On Tuesday, the first 150 Hawaii inmates who had been at the Florence Correctional Center in Arizona arrived at the Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility near Tutwiler, Miss. -- 4,150 miles away from Hawaii.
The state expects to have more than 600 inmates at the Mississippi facility by next year, said Department of Public Safety Director John Peyton.
"This new agreement will result in a major reduction in costs of over a million dollars a year," said Peyton.
Hawaii pays about $52 per day per inmate to house inmates at the Arizona facility and at a prison in Oklahoma, Peyton said. Under a new contract with CCA, Hawaii will pay $43 per inmate per day at the Mississippi prison, with no reduction in inmate services.
It costs the state about $102 per day to house inmates in Hawaii, said Frank Lopez, the department's deputy director for corrections.
But while the state will save money, the move east will cost more for inmates' families. Many already can't afford the airfare to visit loved ones incarcerated on the mainland. "Families are a motivating factor in the rehabilitation of inmates, and families are not able to make mainland prison visits," said Kat Brady, coordinator for the Community Alliance on Prisons.
Even the cost of telephone calls is prohibitive, but the calls are necessary for inmates to keep in contact with their families, she said.
Hawaii prisoners are also "marginalized" on the mainland because they are different, and this presents a lot of problems, she said.
As of May 3, Hawaii had 1,445 inmates at mainland prisons, including 857 at the Diamondback Correctional Center in Oklahoma, 374 at the Arizona facility, the 150 just moved to Mississippi, and 64 women at another facility in Oklahoma, according to Lopez.
The new contract with CCA, which covers the facilities in the three states, requires the Hawaii inmate population to reach 1,500 by Aug. 15, he said.
The contract calls for educational and vocational programs for inmates, as well as other services typical of facilities that house long-term inmates, said Dick Smelser, assistant warden at Tallahatchie.
But Brady also believes many of the Hawaii inmates return home from mainland prisons more hardened.
The new agreement also will allow Hawaii to transfer some of its maximum security, or more violent, inmates to Mississippi, which it was unable to do at the Arizona and Oklahoma prisons. This will help reduce overcrowding at the Halawa Correctional Facility on Oahu, Peyton said.
Hawaii's total inmate population, as of May 3, was 3,545, including 356 females and the 1,445 on the mainland, Lopez said. This does not include the jail population of pretrial detainees and short-term inmates.
Peyton told legislators earlier this year that the number of Hawaii prison inmates had increased 5 percent from a year earlier.
Early in her administration, Lingle said she was working on an innovative plan for a new prison that would work in conjunction with existing facilities. The new system would address the need to keep prisoners in Hawaii rather than ship them off to mainland prisons, she said.
That plan is still in the works, and it remains Lingle's goal to bring the Hawaii inmates home, said the governor's spokesman, Russell Pang.
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Prison with isle inmates
in lockdown after brawl
WATONGA, Okla. >> The Diamondback Correctional Facility, which houses hundreds of Hawaii inmates, remained in lockdown yesterday after a brawl in the recreation yard sent two inmates to the hospital.
The fight started about 8:15 p.m. Friday among inmates from Arizona, according to a statement from the Corrections Corporation of America, the private company that operates the medium-security prison.
No Hawaii prisoners were involved in the fight at the facility located about 65 miles northwest of Oklahoma City.
Two inmates were flown to an Oklahoma City hospital for treatment Friday night. One inmate was listed in stable condition and the other was listed in critical condition yesterday, said Louise Chickering, a spokeswoman for the company.
The prisoners' names and the extent of their injuries were not immediately released. Another 40 inmates were hurt, the company said.
Officials from Arizona had arrived at the facility yesterday afternoon to aid in the investigation of the fight.
"Our investigation is going to be ongoing for the next several days," Chickering said. "We are currently interviewing all inmates that were out in the recreation yard at the time, and that's a long process."
Chickering said a couple hundred inmates were using the recreational yard when the fight broke out. She could not say what caused the fight, but said investigators were trying to determine whether it was gang-related.
"We do not know who the primary agitators were," Chickering said.
The Diamondback Correctional Facility houses about 1,200 prisoners from Arizona and about 850 from Hawaii.