Women's prison in Colorado found lacking
By Kevin Dayton
Hawai'i plans to move 80 women inmates out of a troubled private prison in Colorado by the end of September but is unsure where they will go, prison officials said.
Hawai'i prison spokesman Michael Gaede confirmed the state is requesting bids from facilities to house the Hawai'i inmates and that the request in effect requires they be moved out of the Brush Correctional Facility, a 250-bed prison in northeastern Colorado.
The Brush prison has been under close scrutiny since Colorado authorities disclosed in February they were investigating allegations of sexual misconduct between staff at the prison and eight inmates from three states, including Hawai'i.
Brush Warden Rick Soares resigned in February, and was later indicted as an alleged accomplice in one of the sexual misconduct cases.
Two other prison employees also were indicted on charges of alleged sexual misconduct with inmates, and two more prison workers were indicted along with five inmates in connection with an alleged cigarette smuggling ring.
Those disclosures were followed by reports in March that five convicted felons were allowed to work at the prison because background checks on some staff members had never been completed.
Since then Hawai'i monitors have filed reports noting that the prison failed to comply with its contract with the state in a number of areas, and Colorado authorities released an audit that was highly critical of the prison.
Wyoming officials announced in April they were removing their women inmates from Brush, leaving only the Hawai'i and Colorado prisoners there.
Hawai'i prison officials have had a full-time monitor working at Brush since June because the facility is still in flux, with many newly hired employees, prison officials said.
Hawai'i pays Brush operator GRW Corp. about $52 per day per inmate to house women prisoners under a contract that will expire on July 31.
Those inmates are among 1,600 Hawai'i convicts who are housed at privately run prisons on the Mainland because there is no room for them in state-run Hawai'i prisons.
Gaede said the Hawai'i has agreed to extend the contract with Brush by 60 days to allow time to make the transition to a new prison elsewhere.
After that, the request for proposals requires that the women inmates be housed in a prison that accepts so-called "close custody" inmates.
That effectively rules out Colorado because state law there allows private prisons to house only those out-of-state inmates who are medium custody or lower, not inmates with the higher classifications of close or maximum custody.
Gaede said Hawai'i was looking at alternatives to Brush even before the sexual misconduct allegations surfaced this year, in part because programs at Brush were "not up to snuff."
Contract monitors and other reports this year cited a litany of concerns about the prison, including:
Brush prison officials reported in May that the facility was visited by a doctor only once a month, and a Hawai'i contract monitor's report in May called that staffing inadequate.
Hawai'i contract monitors also warned the facility in February that it was obliged by contract to give inmates better access to dental care, and monitors again cited the same problem in a follow-up inspection in May.
Gil Walker, president of GRW Corp., said inmates have attempted to add fuel to the controversy over problems at Brush, but said Hawai'i officials were generally pleased with the management and other changes his company has made this year.
Those changes included hiring a new warden with many years of experience in the Colorado prison system, and replacing the corporate vice president who oversaw the Brush operation.
Walker said his understanding was that after a group of 21 women state lawmakers wrote to Gov. Linda Lingle in April urging her to move the women prisoners out of Brush, Lingle committed to transferring the women elsewhere.
Russell Pang, spokesman for Lingle, said that was not quite the case. While Lingle was "very concerned" about the reports from Brush, she left it to the state Department of Public Safety to decide how to proceed, he said.
"They are making the decision to pursue this (request for proposal) with the governor's support," Pang said.
Gaede confirmed that one prison the state is considering for the women inmates is the Otter Creek Correctional Center in Wheelwright, Ky. That prison is operated by the Corrections Corporation of America, which already houses more than 1,500 male inmates from Hawai'i in prisons in Arizona, Oklahoma and Mississippi.
Advertiser Big Island Bureau
