Lawmaker calls for action to fix crowded prisons

By Lynda Arakawa
Advertiser Capitol Bureau

The state should seriously consider a study that recommends spending nearly $1 billion during the next 10 years for prisons and jails, but there are questions as to how such a plan can be accomplished, a key state lawmaker said yesterday.

Senate Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs Committee chairwoman Colleen Hanabusa said a consultant's report, commissioned by the state Department of Public Safety, underlined the urgency in improving the state correctional system.

But she acknowledged that the costs are high.

"I don't know if we can do the recommendations as set out for that kind of a price tag, but I do realize that the one thing we are going to have to decide as a state is whether we are going to continue to send our prisoners out of state," Hanabusa said after a legislative briefing on the report by Carter Goble Associates.

The report, released in December, said the correctional system is dangerously crowded, poorly maintained and cannot handle a projected increase in prisoners. It calls for replacing jails in each of the four counties and for adding a new one in Kona. It also calls for building new medium- and minimum-security prisons and a secure substance-abuse treatment facility.

The plan is an update of a similar study in 1991 that found overcrowding problems and poor conditions.

"When a person studied it about 13 years ago and comes back and basically says you haven't done very much, it's time for us to really realize that what was bad then is probably worse now and unless we act affirmatively we are going to be faced with a major problem if the state gets sued," Hanabusa said.

"I think right now it's the best plan we've got," she said. "It's the only plan we've got."

Hanabusa said she will look at Gov. Linda Lingle's proposals, which call for $18.7 million in re-authorized construction money for a new Maui Community Correctional Center, nearly $2 million for planning replacements of the O'ahu Community Correctional Center and the Kaua'i Community Correctional Center, and $6 million for safety improvements at the Halawa Correctional Facility.

Hanabusa also introduced a bill that would authorize general obligation bonds for a new substance-abuse treatment facility.

Hawai'i's correctional system has a rated capacity of 3,369 inmates, but more than 5,650 are in state custody. More than 1,000 of them are serving time in private Mainland prisons under contract with the state.

The study projected Hawai'i's prisoner population will grow to 8,320 inmates by 2013. The study suggested the state might save money if it acquired a large site to hold various correctional facilities rather than find separate sites.

Public Safety Director John Peyton said that the department is considering that option, but that whether or not the state can find such a site is a large question.

Reach Lynda Arakawa at larakawa@honoluluadvertiser.com or at 525-8070.