Plan to move Hawai'i prisoners to Mississippi draws criticism

By Ron Staton
Associated Press

Despite Gov. Linda Lingle's desire to keep Hawai'i's prisoners at home, the state has begun transferring some inmates from one Mainland prison to another that is 1,200 miles farther away from home.

Keeping inmates on the Mainland makes it more difficult for them to stay in touch with their families and to be reintegrated into society, said Sen. Suzanne Chun Oakland, D-13th (Kalihi, Nu'uanu) and vice chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has oversight over the state prison system.

"We should be able to take care of our prisoners here," she said.

Kat Brady, coordinator for the Community Alliance on Prisons, agrees.

"Families are a motivating factor in the rehabilitation of inmates, and families are not able to make Mainland prison visits," she said.

An Associated Press survey earlier this year showed 11 states export large numbers of inmates to other states — about 8,700 — and Hawai'i provides nearly a quarter of the 6,000 transfer inmates in private prisons run by Corrections Corporation of America.

Last week, the first 150 Hawai'i inmates who had been at the Florence Correctional Center in Arizona arrived at the Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility near Tutwiler, Miss. — 4,150 miles from Hawai'i.

The state expects to have more than 600 inmates at the Mississippi facility by next year, said Department of Public Safety Director John Peyton.

"This new agreement will result in a major reduction in costs of over a million dollars a year," said Peyton.

Hawai'i pays about $52 per day per inmate to house inmates at the Arizona facility and at a prison in Oklahoma, Peyton said. Under a new contract with CCA, Hawai'i will pay $43 per inmate per day at the Mississippi prison, with no reduction in inmate services.

It costs the state about $102 per day to house inmates in Hawai'i, said Frank Lopez, the department's deputy director for corrections.

But many inmates' families can't afford the airfare to visit loved ones incarcerated on the Mainland.

"These are families that can least afford it," said Brady, who describes her organization as a broad-based grass-roots initiative.

Hawai'i prisoners are also "marginalized" on the Mainland because they are different, and this presents a lot of problems, she said.

As of May 3, Hawai'i had 1,445 inmates at Mainland prisons, including 857 at the Diamondback Correctional Center in Oklahoma, 374 at the Arizona facility, the 150 just moved to Mississippi, and 64 women at another facility in Oklahoma, according to Lopez.

The new contract with CCA, which covers the facilities in the three states, requires the Hawai'i inmate population to reach 1,500 by Aug. 15, he said.

The contract calls for educational and vocational programs for inmates, as well as other services typical of facilities that house long-term inmates, said Dick Smelser, assistant warden at Tallahatchie.

The state Legislature this year approved spending to increase the number of prisoners at Mainland facilities to 1,500.

Hawai'i's total inmate population, as of May 3, was 3,545, including 356 women and the 1,445 on the Mainland, Lopez said.

Early in her administration, Lingle said she was working on an innovative plan for a new prison that would work in conjunction with existing facilities. The new system would address the need to keep prisoners in Hawai'i rather than ship them off to Mainland prisons, she said.

That plan is still in the works, and it remains Lingle's goal to bring the Hawai'i inmates home, said the governor's spokesman, Russell Pang.

The Legislature appropriated $1.5 million this year for planning and design of a rehabilitation-type facility, said Chun Oakland.

However, the facility would take six to eight years to build, and, in the meantime, Hawai'i will have to continue housing some of its prisoners on the Mainland, Chun Oakland said.