New federal detention center wins praise
By David Waite
Advertiser Courts Writer
Three months after opening at Aokea Place and Elliot Street near the airport, the new Federal Detention Center is drawing rave reviews from the people who run and work at the $63 million facility.
Administrators say even prisoners returning from federal prisons on the Mainland praise Hawai'i's new facility.
Lawyers who deal almost daily with federal detainees have high praise for the facility as well.
Warden Joe Booker and executive assistant Deborah Westley said the center has operated as planned from the moment the first detainee walked through the door last summer.
No security glitches, they say, no equipment malfunctions, not even a single report of prisoner-on-prisoner or prisoner-on-staff fisticuffs, so far anyway.
As of last week, the inmate population stood at 330, Westley said, far short of the rated capacity of 670. Some of the units have yet to hold their first detainee, but that will probably change in January when, under the terms of an agreement negotiated between federal and state officials, the first of up to 200 state inmates begin arriving at the federal center to take some of the pressure off the state's crowded facilities.
It's a case of turnabout since federal agencies used to pay the state to house what were primarily federal pretrial detainees in state facilities.
In addition, federal prisoners with less than two years remaining on their sentences can apply to be moved back to Hawai'i from Mainland prisons.
And from the look of it, there's no place like home for federal prisoners from Hawai'i who have done time on the Mainland.
"One of the things they seem to like the most is the food," Westley said.
Assistant federal public defender Michael Weight said the food at the Honolulu facility ranks high on the satisfaction list of the detainees he has met with, "both in terms of quantity and quality."
"It's not the baloney sandwiches and Tang some places on the Mainland serve," Weight said.
And the facility itself is a far cry from some of the places on the Mainland where federal prisoners are held, such as the San Bernardino city jail in California, Weight said.
He said prisoners at the new Honolulu facility are housed no more than two to a room, each of which has an exterior window.
"It might be only 2 1/2 inches wide and maybe 2 feet high so there is no way they can escape, but depending on the unit they're in the can look at the mountains or the ocean or the airplanes," Weight said.
The cell doors remain open from early morning to lights-out time at night and each of the units has a kitchenette so that detainees can make instant coffee, tea or soup.
All of center's staff wear white shirts and ties, and some go as far as wearing a jacket, Weight said.
"Their attitude seems to be, 'We will treat you with respect and expect to be treated the same way in return,'" Weight said.
The center does have a "special holding unit" on the seventh floor for detainees who break the rules.
"No one wants to wind up there because they can be kept in lock-down for up to 23 1/2 hours a day," Weight said.
He said he has no major criticisms of the way the new center is being run and only a few minor ones.
"A lot of the staff people have been brought in from the Mainland — from Texas and New York and every place else in between — and they don't really understand 'local style' yet," Weight said.
And, because the facility is so new, different staff members require different things of him before he is allowed to visit clients at the facility.
"But none of those are big things and should smooth out as time goes on," Weight said.
Westley said a "full complement" staff at the center would number 254 positions. At present 196 of those are filled, 83 of them by local residents. Information about job opportunities is available at www.bop.gov
Reach David Waite at dwaite@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8030.
