State has plan
for prison growth

Officials say new facilities
in the works will ease the
increase in inmate population

State officials acknowledge a federal report's finding that Hawaii has the fifth-highest growth in prison population in the nation, but say the increase was expected and that they already have a plan to house every prisoner.

The U.S. Department of Justice said on Sunday that Hawaii saw a 7.5 percent increase in prison inmates in 2003 from the previous year.

Hawaii had 5,828 inmates in state and federal prisons in 2003, compared with 5,423 in 2002. Public safety officials said that as of Nov. 1 the total of Hawaii inmates had grown to 6,063, with 1,709 of that number being housed in prisons in Oklahoma, Arizona, Mississippi and Colorado.

Nationally, the number of inmates in state and federal prisons rose 2.1 percent last year, to nearly 1.5 million, despite a decrease in violent and property crimes, according to the Justice Department study.

However, Department of Public Safety Director John Peyton said the state had projected the growth reported in the federal study and has a master plan that deals with a continuing increase in prisoners.

The state wants to replace almost all of the state's prisons and jails and bring back Hawaii inmates housed on the mainland by 2013, according to the recent DPS report.

The state's 10-year Corrections Master Plan, released in December, shows that construction costs for building new facilities and expanding others in all four counties could reach $1 billion. The new facilities would house 8,320 projected Hawaii prisoners by 2013.

However, Peyton warned yesterday that those figures were compiled using "2003 dollars" and that the actual cost would likely be much higher.

"Every day, the cost goes up," Peyton said. "Seven of the eight facilities (prisons and jails) we have need to be replaced. They can't be salvaged.

"Everything but Halawa (Correctional Facility). Halawa doesn't need to be replaced, but it does need to be better maintained," Peyton said.

The seven facilities and centers slated to be replaced include the Waiawa Correctional Facility, the Women's Community Correctional Center, the Halawa Special Needs Correctional Facility and the community correctional centers on Hawaii, Maui, Kauai and Oahu.

In Hawaii, correctional facilities refer to prisons, and they hold people who have been sentenced. Correctional centers refer to jails and hold people who have yet to go to trial or are awaiting sentencing.

Peyton, who will be leaving his post in the coming months, said the community correctional centers are a priority now because those inmates cannot be sent out of state, since they are usually arrestees and defendants being held while awaiting court proceedings.

But prisons remain an issue because the state wants to bring back all Hawaii inmates from the mainland by 2013.

"We can bring everybody home in 10 years if this plan is followed," Peyton said. "We're already knee-deep in the process. ... What we need is a significant amount of money to continue the process."