Hawai'i has violated the constitutional rights of mentally ill prisoners at O'ahu Community Correctional Center by subjecting them to harmful methods of isolation and restraint and failing to adequately monitor them even while on suicide watch, the U.S. Department of Justice has concluded.

The state has also failed to provide adequate treatment or staff to care for mentally ill prisoners at the facility, exposing them to the risk of serious harm.

The Justice Department's findings, in a March 14 letter to Gov. Linda Lingle, were based on an on-site inspection in October 2005. The state has been aware of the preliminary findings since shortly after the inspection and learned the details of an experts' report on the situation in July 2006.

State Attorney General Mark Bennett said last night that the state has made progress in improving conditions at the prison, the state's largest, and he is confident the state can work with the Justice Department's civil rights division on a resolution that avoids a federal lawsuit.

"I am confident that with the progress that we have made, that we will be able to come to a satisfactory understanding with the Department of Justice," Bennett told the state Senate Public Safety Committee.

The committee had raised the Justice Department's findings during a nearly six-hour confirmation hearing yesterday for Iwalani White as director of the state Department of Public Safety, which oversees jails and prisons.

The Justice Department's findings on OCCC specifically cited the department's past use of "therapeutic lockdown" of mentally ill prisoners as unconstitutional because it amounted to punishment. The practice was described as the unorthodox use of long-term seclusion where prisoners are isolated in their cells without interaction with staff, including mental-health specialists.

"There is nothing 'therapeutic' about OCCC's use of therapeutic lockdown," the findings state. The practice "harms detainees in that it often exacerbates the effects of detainees' illnesses."

'HARMFUL ... SECLUSION'

The Justice Department also described the prison's past practice of placing prisoners isolated and alone in a single cell on suicide watch as "harmful and professionally unjustifiable seclusion."

Jail administrators, after the Justice Department's 2005 visit, said they stopped the use of "therapeutic lockdown" and reconfigured the modules where mentally ill prisoners are held to prevent isolation. Better staff supervision and intervention has also helped reduce the need to place mentally ill prisoners on suicide watch.

The OCCC had been under court supervision between 1985 and 1999 for poor prison conditions that included a lack of mental-health services.

The state has 49 days from the receipt of the March 14 letter to reach a resolution with the Justice Department or face a lawsuit. "We have every confidence that we will be able to reach an adequate resolution to this case," Wan Kim, an assistant attorney general, wrote to Lingle.

Yesterday, several mental-health specialists, testifying under subpoena, told the committee that White's poor management over the eight months she has served as interim director has derailed the state's progress in responding to the Justice Department.

PSYCHOLOGIST BANNED

Reneau Kennedy, a psychologist hired last May to lead mental-health reform in the state's jails and prisons, said she was banned by White from visiting or talking with her staff at OCCC between September and November for reasons that she said have never been explained. She also said she has been prohibited from visiting Halawa Correctional Facility since November.

White alleged in a September letter to Kennedy that Kennedy had engaged in inappropriate behavior concerning an inmate at the jail, which Kennedy believes, but has not confirmed, is related to her response to a mentally ill inmate who had attacked a guard and was being held in restraints.

Kennedy also said she has never had a formal meeting with White on mental-health reform since she has been on the job. "I have never had a face-to-face meeting with Iwalani White," she said.

White said after the hearing that she could not respond to the comments because it was a personnel matter.

Anne Keating, the mental-health section administrator at the prison, told senators that White has not provided resources for mental-health staff and has fostered a climate of fear, primarily by temporarily banning Kennedy, Keating's supervisor, from the facility. "The lack of leadership from the interim director has placed mental-health reform in jeopardy for the state of Hawai'i," Keating said.

MORE CRITICISM

Other administrators at the department also criticized White for a lack of vision and for being too quick to launch internal investigations, including some when workers like Kennedy were not fully informed of the charges against them.

White's supporters, however, said she has the talent and ability to lead the department through a much-needed regime change. The department has had unsteady leadership over the past several years, with a series of different directors. The department has been without a permanent director since November 2004.

Honolulu Prosecutor Peter Carlisle said new leaders are often tested by competing factions within such a large department as Public Safety. He said White, a former deputy prosecutor and Family Court judge, is capable of success. "Somebody who can move that department forward is Iwalani White," Carlisle said. "And she is somebody I'm extremely proud of."

Tommy Johnson, the administrator of the Hawai'i Paroling Authority, said he found White to be "firm, fair and consistent."

"I know there are some people who do have concerns and the committee was fair and heard them out," White said after the hearing. "But I think maybe some of their opposition may be based on incomplete information, and I'm hoping that after I've testified on Thursday, and I've had my say, they may not feel a whole lot better, but they may feel a little better."

State Sen. Will Espero, D-20th ('Ewa Beach, Waipahu), the chairman of the committee, said the panel will continue the hearing tomorrow and will likely make a recommendation on White's confirmation by next week. Her nomination would then go before the full Senate.

"I think there was some very strong testimony on both sides, and I want to hear what interim director White has to say," Espero said.

Reach Derrick DePledge at ddepledge@honoluluadvertiser.com.