By TREENA SHAPIRO Associated Press ADVERTISING HONOLULU — Aging facilities and a lack of bed space require Hawaii to house almost 1,800 of its 6,000 inmates in Arizona prisons. Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s administration and the state Legislature want the prisoners
By TREENA SHAPIRO
Associated Press
HONOLULU — Aging facilities and a lack of bed space require Hawaii to house almost 1,800 of its 6,000 inmates in Arizona prisons. Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s administration and the state Legislature want the prisoners returned to Hawaii.
“The purpose, of course, is to lower our prison costs,” said Sen. Will Espero, chairman of the Public Safety Committee.
Housing prisoners on the mainland isn’t necessarily cheaper — it costs roughly $76 a day to house prisoners on the mainland, compared with $127 in Hawaii. However, keeping the inmates in the state ensures the $45 million a year spent on mainland prison contracts stays in the local economy.
Abercrombie’s administration has spent about 14 months looking for ways to increase efficiency and accountability in the state’s judiciary and public safety departments, while also trying to reduce recidivism among inmates.
“As we went through this process, we were also very mindful that we do not have a giant price tag for U.S. mainland beds,” said state Public Safety Director Jodie Maesaka-Hirata, speaking Tuesday at an informational briefing for Espero’s committee. “Our job is to return inmates home to Hawaii.”
By July, the Public Safety Department plans to implement a number of strategies to start bringing inmates home, including reconfiguring bed space and streamlining the community correctional center system. The state also plans to offer better supervision and tracking of released felons so fewer wind up in prison again.
In addition to bringing prisoners home, the state is making a more concerted effort to avoid sending them to the mainland in the first place by keeping all Hawaii’s prison beds filled.
“We didn’t want to have an overabundance of Hawaii beds and still send people to mainland,” Maesaka-Hirata said.
The Legislature and governor have already approved funding for construction projects that will increase capacity by about 1,000 beds over the next four years.
However, that would still leave the state 750 to 800 beds short. Maesaka-Hirata identified construction projects on Oahu, Maui and the Big Island that would allow the state to bring all mainland inmates back to Hawaii.
The discussion comes about two weeks after a lawsuit against the state was filed over the death of a Hawaii inmate who was killed at an Arizona prison in 2010.
The suit alleges that the state agreed to and tolerated insufficient staffing at the prison where Bronson Nunuha, of Waianae, was brutally slain.
