EDITORIAL
Hawai'i prisons flirting with federal takeover

Hawai'i lawmakers are inclined to have their cake and eat it, too, where the state's prisons are concerned.

That is, they like to pass tough lock-em-up laws that send miscreants away for long prison sentences. They think that appeals to a lot of voters.

But they don't like to pay what it costs to run prisons under the conditions they've created.

Now it appears they may not even be able to afford to maintain present conditions, with the forecast $300 million-plus revenue shortfall caused by the economy's post-9/11 dive.

But decent conditions in the state's prisons are not an optional luxury we can afford in good years and pass up in the bad ones.

What appears to be about to happen next is a case of déjà vu all over again.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued Hawai'i in 1984 over abysmal conditions in two of its prison facilities, O'ahu Community Correctional Center in Kalihi and the Women's Community Correctional Center in Kailua.

As a result of that lawsuit, the two prisons were placed under federal oversight, where they remained for 15 years as conditions gradually improved.

We doubt the improvements demanded by the feds — aimed not at "coddling" prisoners but at ending conditions the court found tantamount to "cruel and unusual" punishment — would have occurred without federal oversight.

And in 1999 we wrote in this space that we were "frankly nervous that ending that oversight — taking the heat off — will invite officials to begin cutting the corners again that begin a facility's descent into national notoriety."

We were half right. It wasn't prison officials cutting corners, it was lawmakers cutting funding. But the descent is well under way.

Now the OCCC, Halawa and Maui facilities are badly overcrowded, with triple-bunking in one-man cells.

"The state has gone back to where it was before," said Brent White, legal director for the ACLU of Hawai'i. The question in his mind is not whether a new lawsuit will be filed if conditions don't improve, but when.

It is self-defeating foolishness for the state to allow this to happen — for three reasons:

• Why spend millions of dollars for legal services in fighting such a lawsuit when that money could be spent to improve conditions in the prisons?
• Why would "the land of aloha" want the notoriety of running prison hellholes when simply sending nonviolent drug offenders to treatment instead of incarceration would get the state off the hook, save millions of dollars and produce productive citizens instead of resentful ex-cons?
• How can we treat our sons and daughters, our brothers and sisters in such an inhumane manner and look ourselves in the eye?