Hawai'i inmates housed in Arizona to move

By Walter Wright
Advertiser Staff Writer

About 200 Hawai'i inmates are being moved from a Corrections Corporation of America prison in Florence, Ariz., to another of the prison operator's facilities in Oklahoma, acting Hawai'i Public Safety Director Jim Propotnick said yesterday.

Under its contract with Hawai'i, the company can move inmates in its care to any of their approved facilities, he said.

The move took place after the company signed a contract with the federal government to house federal prisoners at the Arizona prison, Propotnick said. The company receives $91 per prisoner per day from the federal government, compared with $61 per day from the Hawai'i state government for its prisoners, he said.

Propotnick said the federal authorities' willingness to house convicts at the Arizona prison spoke well of conditions there, because the federal government has the highest standards in the nation for such facilities.

Propotnick said the move was unrelated to litigation filed by a convicted murderer last month charging that the Hawai'i state government and the Corrections Corporation had failed to protect him from being beaten in 2001 by members of a gang at the Florence facility. Nor was it related to an audit of the facility conducted that year by Hawai'i authorities, Propotnick said.

The move will leave about 400 Hawai'i inmates at the Arizona facility, and bring the number at the Oklahoma prison to between 600 and 700, Propotnick said.

Hawai'i has about 1,340 inmates housed on the Mainland, including some women at a prison in Colorado and eight to 10 high-security prisoners housed in various maximum and supermaximum lockups.

Reach Walter Wright at wwright@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8054.