The state may spend $100 million or more on a new 800-bed jail and transition facility that would replace the Maui Community Correctional Center. The project would be the first new jail in Hawai'i in decades and add much-needed space in a county that faces chronic jail crowding.

The long-delayed project is the most ambitious effort in years to expand Hawai'i's crowded correctional system. The project would provide new minimum-security beds for inmates who are nearly ready for release after serving their prison sentences.

"We've just finally made the decision that we're going to go forward with this," said Lt. Gov. James "Duke" Aiona.

State Rep. Bob Nakasone, D-9th District (Kahului, Pa'ia), said he met recently with administration officials to discuss the plan for a new jail in Pu'unene, and was told about $50 million in state and federal funds already set aside for the new Maui jail would be used to pay for the first 125 minimum-security beds on the new site.

Public Safety Interim Director Clayton Frank said the plan is to develop the project in three phases, starting with low-security beds for inmates who will work in the community. A major component of the first phase will be to install infrastructure such as extra water and sewer capacity for the larger jail replacement project.

The project has solid community support from residents who want to move Maui's jail away from its current location, where inmates are now housed across the street from a single-family home subdivision, Nakasone said.

The 38-acre Pu'unene site where the new jail would be built is "an ideal location, and surely the Wailuku community would support moving that whole (MCCC) facility out of there," Nakasone said. The new site is five miles from MCCC, and is adjacent to Maui Raceway Park.

TRANSITION BEDS

MCCC was designed to hold 209 men and women inmates and has an operating capacity of up to 301 prisoners. However, in recent years MCCC has often housed more than 330 prisoners, and at times the inmate population there has climbed to 380.

Louise Kim McCoy, spokeswoman for the Department of Public Safety, said the jail held 302 inmates at the beginning of last week.

Aiona said the Pu'unene project is the first major initiative to expand the number of re-entry beds available to inmates returning from Mainland prisons.

Public safety officials have said they need to dramatically increase the number of transition beds available statewide to ease inmates back into the community as they approach the ends of their prison terms.

The prison population has grown so rapidly in recent years that the state now holds more than 2,100 men and women inmates in private prisons on the Mainland because there is no room for them in Hawai'i facilities. However, the state hasn't added many new transitional beds to provide job training, drug treatment and other services to those inmates as they prepare for their release.

The Pu'unene project has been a long time coming. Frank, the interim DPS director, said the original concept proposed in 2000 was to build a 256-bed minimum-security compound.

That later evolved into a larger effort to move MCCC, which in 2002 was expected to cost $85 million, Nakasone said. He estimated the "minimum" cost now will be $100 million.

Aiona said the delays were in part because a new administration took over, and in part because of changes in leadership at MCCC.

"It just seems like one of those things where you have a change in leadership sometimes, and it just happens that way," he said.

MONEY MATTERS

Aiona said the current plan calls for completion of the first phase of the project by 2010.

Prison officials have spent $1.7 million since 2004 planning the project, and lawmakers set aside another $43 million for construction. The U.S. Department of Justice also has provided a $13 million grant that the state plans to use for the project.

Nakasone said he has been told the first phase of the project is relatively expensive because it will include the cost of installing infrastructure such as water and sewer lines that will serve the larger 800-bed facility that is planned in future phases.

"To me personally, the numbers don't seem right," he said. "That's a lot of money for 100 beds minimum security, so I really question the numbers."

Senate Public Safety Committee Chairman Will Espero said he is concerned that the state could lose the $13 million federal grant unless Public Safety officials get moving on the project. The state is supposed to spend the money by Aug. 19, 2008.

Frank said the state has asked the Department of Justice for an extension on the federal grant.

Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com.