Severe overcrowding has been a major factor contributing to the spread of coronavirus within Hawaii’s jails, including the current outbreak at the Hawaii Community Correctional Center in Hilo, which has now infected more than half of the inmate population and sent two guards to the hospital. Yet, a planned expansion of the state’s neighbor island jails is being delayed once again due to construction bids coming in higher than expected, according to the state Department of Public Safety.

Plans to expand the jails on Hawaii island, Maui and Kauai began in 2016, when the Legislature appropriated $37.5 million for design and construction. A little more than $1 million has been expended for planning and design work at each of the facilities, and draft environmental assessments for the three jails, released in 2019, estimated that construction would begin in 2020 and be completed this year. But construction work hasn’t even started, and the new completion date is now pegged at mid- to late 2024 for the jails on Hawaii island and Maui, while plans to expand the Kauai jail have sputtered.

Public-safety officials say that’s because construction bids came in higher than what had been allocated for the projects, prompting them to ask the Legislature this year to re-appropriate about $13 million in funds to expand the Kauai Community Correctional Center to the jails on Maui and Hawaii island.

“This allows the team to pursue moving forward with construction awards for housing additions at the two most overcrowded jail facilities in the state,” Toni Schwartz, a spokeswoman for the Public Safety Department, said by email.

Schwartz said the contract for the Maui Community Correctional Center had been awarded to F&H Construction, and the contract for the Hilo jail went to Nan Inc. She didn’t have the award amounts Friday.

Hawaii’s jails have been severely overcrowded for years, prompting the Hawaii chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union in 2017 to file a complaint with the U.S. Justice Department calling for a federal investigation into “unconstitutional and unsafe conditions” endured by Hawaii inmates. The complaint cited dilapidated infrastructure, unsanitary conditions, lack of hygiene items and not enough medical staff, among other problems.

When the coronavirus pandemic hit early last year, state officials tried to address the heightened risk it posed to the incarcerated population and released about 300 inmates. But the number of inmates still outstripped the design capacities of the jails, and population levels have gone back up as vaccinations become widely available even though an estimated 25% to 50% of inmates remain unvaccinated. Public-safety officials say many prisoners have declined the vaccines.

This month there were 344 inmates being kept at the Hawaii Community Correctional Center, which was designed to hold just 206 inmates. There were 312 inmates at the Maui Community Correctional Center, which was designed to hold just 209. The Kauai Com­munity Correctional Center had 138 inmates, even though it was designed to hold just 110. The Kauai facility is the only jail to have so far escaped a major coronavirus outbreak.

Since the start of the pandemic, 787 jail inmates have tested positive for the coronavirus, including inmates at the Oahu jail. That jail is also severely overcrowded, and the state is looking to relocate it.

The conditions at the Hilo jail, jolted by a major coronavirus outbreak that began late last month, have grown so stressful that inmates in recent weeks have begun riots, setting small fires and flooding facilities, said Gina Szeto-Wong, a Honolulu attorney who is representing Hawaii inmates in a class-action lawsuit against the state alleging that it has failed to adequately protect inmates against COVID. At least nine Hawaii inmates have died from COVID since the start of the pandemic.

“I think we often sort of forget about the jails and prisons and incarcerated individuals, and often we can,” said Szeto-Wong. “We can go to the supermarket, we can go to work and drop off our kids.”

But Szeto-Wong stressed that the COVID cases in the jails and prisons are also affecting the wider community as guards contract the virus and inmates are released.

“Any kind of outbreak there needs to be treated with the same seriousness as any other place,” she said.

The current outbreak at the Hilo jail as of Friday had grown to include 199 inmates and 18 staff, according to the state Department of Health’s latest cluster report.

Public-safety officials said they have transferred 28 inmates from the Hilo jail to the Halawa Correctional Facility and Women’s Community Correctional Center, both on Oahu, to help alleviate some of the overcrowding.

“We have made no secret of the fact that our jails, especially HCCC, are overcrowded,” Public Safety Director Max Otani said in a news release. “The COVID-19 pandemic adds an extra burden to these facilities.”