State prison officials have tentatively selected a Kentucky prison owned by the Corrections Corp. of America to house 80 women inmates from Hawai'i.

If the contract is approved, the inmates would be transferred by October from a private prison in Brush, Colo., to the Otter Creek Correctional Center in Wheelwright, Ky., said Michael Gaede, Hawai'i Department of Public Safety spokesman.

CCA already has contracts with Hawai'i to house approximately 1,755 men in prisons in Oklahoma, Mississippi and Arizona. The Mainland prison contracts are expected to cost the state about $36 million this fiscal year, according to Frank Lopez, acting public safety director. The state estimates it costs $105 per day to house inmates in state-run prisons in Hawai'i compared with an average of $58 per day in Mainland facilities.

The publicly traded CCA is the country's largest private prison operator, holding a total of about 62,000 prisoners.

The Brush Correctional Center in Colorado is run by the much smaller GRW Corp.

Earlier this year, two former corrections officers at Brush were charged with felonies for alleged sexual contact with two Hawai'i inmates and a prisoner from Wyoming. An investigation by Colorado authorities concluded that prison staff was allegedly involved in sexual misconduct with eight inmates from Colorado, Wyoming and Hawai'i.

The warden at Brush resigned and was later charged with a felony as an accomplice in one of the cases. Colorado authorities also discovered that five people working at the prison had felony convictions that went undetected because the company failed to complete background checks on all of its staff.

Monitors from Hawai'i reported other problems at Brush, including inadequate medical and dental care, and improperly run rehabilitation programs in which inmates were routinely teaching classes to other inmates. A Colorado audit released in June found the prison clinic was not licensed as required under Colorado law, a lapse that also violated the prison's contract with Hawai'i.

When the state issued a new request for proposals from companies interested in housing women prisoners, it required that the facility accept so-called "close custody" prisoners who require a higher level of security. That ruled out any private prison in Colorado, because state law there allows private prisons to house only those out-of-state inmates with a lower security status.

It has not been easy for Hawai'i to find Mainland accommodations for its women prisoners.

Female inmates from Hawai'i were removed from the Crystal City Correctional Center in 1998 because of concerns about sanitation and lack of required treatment programs. The women were transferred to an Oklahoma prison but were later moved to Colorado after Hawai'i monitors reported that required programs weren't being provided.

The Otter Creek prison, which was built in an old coal-mining town, housed male inmates from Indiana until last year. Operator CCA converted it to a women's facility and has a contract with Kentucky to house 400 prisoners there.

The facility has 656 beds, according to CCA.

Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com.