Posted on: Friday, August 17, 2001

Editorial
Warning signs: Isle inmates on Mainland

Disturbing stories by Advertiser Capitol Bureau Chief Kevin Dayton about conditions for Island inmates in Mainland prisons suggest problems ahead for the state's practice of using those prisons to relieve overcrowding in prisons at home.

In Sunday's Advertiser, Dayton reported on a claim by three Hawai'i women who served time in a privately run Oklahoma prison that they were assaulted by prison staff there, and by a fourth woman who alleges she was "tortured" by prison officials after she complained.

Wednesday, Dayton quoted inmates and former staff members as saying that drugs in many varieties were abundantly available to inmates of the same prison, from heroin and crack cocaine to "ice" and marijuana.

Dayton's interviews with attorneys, officials and former prison employees, as well as a review of court documents, suggest a troubling pattern of sexual, physical and mental abuse in a facility where Hawai'i continues to send female prisoners. There are 63 Hawai'i women in the prison under a contract that costs the state about $1.1 million a year.

But prison authorities, both in Oklahoma and Honolulu, say their information suggests nothing unusual in that prison. No allegations of sex abuse have been substantiated, they said, and while drugs are a constant problem at all prison facilities, urine tests showed they weren't out of the ordinary at the McLoud facility.

Investigations are continuing. But for now, it's enough to worry that Mainland prisons may not always be easily and inexpensively available, as they are now, as overflow outlets for Hawai'i's overcrowded facilities. Several states in which Island prisoners have been incarcerated are tightening criteria to exclude the "problem" prisoners that Hawai'i tends to export.

The state must not let itself be caught short by growing exclusion of Hawai'i prisoners on the Mainland combined with a growing overall inmate population at home.

A possible alternative could be the construction of a large prison in Hawai'i. But we continue to believe that expansion of sentencing alternatives for nonviolent offenders would serve the same purpose, much cheaper and far more humanely.