'Tents' will house up to 448 prison inmates
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By Kevin Dayton
Advertiser Big Island Bureau
HILO, Hawai'i — State prison officials hope to use federal money to build new tentlike structures to house up to 448 prison inmates on Maui, Kaua'i and the Big Island to ease overcrowding in state prisons and jails.
The proposal amounts to the largest single expansion of the state prison system since Halawa Correctional Facility opened 20 years ago, although the new bed space would be in temporary structures.
The housing would be 7,064-square-foot "Sprung Instant Structures" made from a membrane stretched over an aluminum skeleton. Each structure could house up to 64 inmates, according to a letter from Gov. Linda Lingle to federal authorities.
According to Lingle's letter, two of the structures would be built on Maui, two on Kaua'i, two at Kulani Correctional Facility on the Big Island, and one would be built at the Hawai'i Community Correctional Center in Hilo.
Together those structures would provide housing for up to 256 men and 192 women inmates.
Director of Public Safety Clayton Frank said the structures at the community correctional centers would house minimum security or community custody inmates, including prisoners serving brief jail terms of a year or less.
The structures at Kulani, which is a prison, would be used to house convicted felons classified as minimum and community custody inmates who are approaching completion of longer sentences.
The objective is to make more space available inside secure correctional facilities around the state, he said. The state is proposing to use temporary structures "because at this time, that is what we can afford," Frank said.
In some cases the temporary structures would be inside a fence, and in others they would not. The jail on Kaua'i does not have a perimeter fence, nor does Kulani. The Maui jail does have a fence, and the new structures would be inside it, Frank said.
It is not clear yet exactly where the new housing unit would be placed on the crowded HCCC grounds. Frank said it may be necessary to demolish the old jail structure on the site to make room for the new temporary buildings, and some demolition of old structures may also be required on the MCCC site.
FEDERAL, STATE FUNDING
The project would be financed by $12.65 million in federal funds along with $1.4 million in state money, which would pay for the new inmate housing and other projects, according to correspondence between Lingle and the U.S. Department of Justice. Those projects include:
Similar structures to house drug treatment programs would also be put up at the Maui Community Correctional Center, the Hawai'i Community Correctional Center in Hilo and the Kulani Correctional Facility on the Big Island.
Those 36 beds for boys would ease overcrowding at the state's only youth prison, the Hawai'i Youth Correctional Facility in Kailua, O'ahu, according to the Lingle letter.
HYCF is "currently occupied beyond capacity," according to the Lingle letter. "Moreover, overcrowding contributes to the ongoing deficiencies in the operations of the facilities under a memorandum of agreement relating to a Department of Justice settlement."
A special monitor appointed by the Justice Department has been reviewing state efforts to remedy safety and healthcare violations found by federal inspectors in 2004.
The state had originally planned to use the federal grant money from the Violent Offender Incarceration and Truth-In-Sentencing Incentive Program Grant money to help finance a new 800-bed jail on Maui proposed for Pu'unene, but delays in that project meant the state would not be able to meet the October 2008 deadline for spending the federal money.
To prevent the loss of the money, new plans were drawn up to spend the federal funds, and those plans were outlined in Lingle's Nov. 16 letter.
Domingo Herraiz, director of Office of Justice Programs for the Justice Department, approved Lingle's request to change the use of the money.
However, Frank said the whole effort depends on producing an acceptable environmental report under the National Environmental Policy Act by October, which is required before the state can actually buy the temporary structures. A consultant has been hired to begin work on that report, Frank said.
The state prison population has grown so rapidly over the past decade that Hawai'i now holds more than 2,000 men and women inmates in private prisons on the Mainland because there is no room for them in Hawai'i facilities.
The state spends more than $50 million a year to house those inmates in facilities owned by the Corrections Corporation of America.
The state has also struggled with chronic jail overcrowding, and has proposals in the works for the new Maui jail and a new jail on the Big Island. In the meantime, the state rents beds in the Federal Detention Center near the Honolulu Airport to ease jail overcrowding.
Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com.
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