The debate over replacing the badly overcrowded and outmoded Oahu Community Correctional Center (OCCC) has gone on far too long.
As bad as conditions are at OCCC, they are no better at the neighbor island CCCs. The Halawa Correctional Facility — the last facility built in Hawaii — has been operating at levels far exceeding its capacity since it opened in 1988. It is now showing the accumulated wear and tear, as evidenced by the failure of major systems, like its security electronics. We are spending tens of millions of dollars a year simply to keep our facilities running safely. Eventually, all the duct tape in Hawaii won’t be enough. We can’t just “kick the can down the road.”
The end of the road may be near. The ACLU has recently asked the Department of Justice to intervene in our correctional system. This is not good news. In 2011, in Brown v. Plata, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a federal court’s mandate to limit the California prison system’s population to 137.5 percent of design capacity. Now, the ACLU asserts that the population at five of Hawaii’s eight facilities far exceed that benchmark.
The numbers are sobering, but they do not reflect the depth of the challenges confronting the state on a daily basis. Severe overcrowding makes it very difficult for the Department of Public Safety to do its job properly.
>> One of the most basic principles of correctional management is proper separation of inmates by gender, security risk, mental health need, program need, etc. It would be nice if the numbers in each of these categories matched the capacity of individual housing units, but in reality, this doesn’t happen.
As a result, some OCCC units may operate under capacity, while others may hold three times the number they were designed for. In effect, overcrowding is worse than represented by the numbers.
>> Jails and prisons nationwide have become de facto mental institutions and elder care facilities. They were not built to serve this population. Living units have been retrofitted to accommodate these needs. As a result, some of the most secure housing is not available to house inmates who present a security risk, forcing minimum-security housing to be used for medium-custody inmates.
>> Facilities struggle to provide basic mandated services such as health care, exercise and food service. Neighbor island facilities cannot properly separate inmates with mental health needs. Food preparation and distribution is a thrice-daily challenge. The nurses have a crushing workload, as inmates — many of them homeless — enter with a myriad of health challenges.
>> Chronic overcrowding is debilitating for inmates. Three inmates spend 12-16 hours per day in 8’ x 10’ cell with a double bunk, a toilet/sink combo, and a small writing desk. One of them will have only a mattress, shoved under a bunk during the day and spread over the tiny floor at night.
>> OCCC, with 17 living modules scattered throughout the property, is terribly inefficient. Each of the units requires that ACOs be present 24/7, 365 days per year. Additional ACOs are needed to supervise inmate “movements” from one point of the maze-like facility to another. Food service workers deliver three meals per day to each of these units. It is no surprise that OCCC, with one of the highest staff-to-inmate ratios in the country, is very expensive to operate.
Some advocate reducing the inmate population rather than rebuilding our facilities. This is unrealistic. We cannot escape the toxic conditions in our facilities by releasing inmates UNLESS we are willing to unduly risk the safety of our community.
According to prisons Director Nolan Espinda, there are fewer than 100 inmates statewide who meet the criteria for early release from jail. At OCCC alone, we would have to release nearly 250 inmates to meet the limit set in Brown.
We need to correct the unacceptable conditions at our correctional facilities before the federal court makes us do it.
These are places where people live and some of our friends and family work. These institutions are essential to the public safety.
We can’t replace all facilities at once, but OCCC is a necessary start. Let’s do it because it’s the human thing to do.
Ted Sakai was director of the state Department of Public Safety, 1998-2002 and 2012-2014.
Correction: Corrections officer Terry Santos was pictured walking through a connecting corridor at the Oahu Community Correctional Center; he was misidentified in a caption on Page E4 Sunday.
