The ACLU of Hawai‘i Foundation has filed a formal complaint asking the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Hawaii’s overcrowded and overtaxed jails and prisons and to force the state to remedy the situation.
The action follows what Mateo Caballero, ACLU of Hawaiʻi Foundation legal director, on Tuesday called a yearlong investigation in which the organization reached out to newly released inmates about conditions within the correctional system.
The former inmates, he said, described not only crowded cells and facilities, but the routine denial of basic medical services, unsafe food handling, a shortage of hygiene items tied to unsanitary conditions, and an aging and poorly maintained infrastructure that can be hazardous, among other things.
In its 29-page complaint, the ACLU asserted that Hawaii’s prisons and jails fail to meet minimum standards and violate the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth and 14th amendments, which prohibit cruel and unusual punishment.
The document chronicles overcrowding and underfunding in seven of the nine jails and prisons run by the state, a situation that has caused “systemwide deterioration in nearly every aspect of functioning.”
Hawaii has been grappling with overcrowding since the 1980s, leading the ACLU to file a suit that resulted in a consent decree that forced “substantial compliance” with standards by 1999. Along the way, the state began shipping a significant portion of its prisoners to the mainland.
Despite these and other short-term “fixes,” overcrowding has persisted as a long-term trend in Hawaii, Caballero said.
“The state needs to take a step back and rethink its policies on incarceration,” he said.
Joshua Wisch, special assistant to state Attorney General Douglas Chin, said the state Department of Public Safety forwarded the ACLU’s complaint letter to the Attorney General’s Office for its advice Tuesday afternoon.
Wisch said he couldn’t comment except to say that the complaint makes allegations regarding events that span multiple years over multiple administrations. “Reviewing the claims made in this letter will take time,” he said.
State Rep. Gregg Takayama, chairman of the House Public Safety Committee, said the ACLU complaint points to problems that have already been voiced by state DPS Director Nolan Espinda, others and himself.
“It’s an ongoing problem we can’t ignore,” Takayama said. However, he added, state officials are certainly working on the problem.
Last year, Takayama said, the state Legislature approved a law that allows the DPS director to release some types of low-level nonviolent inmates from Oahu Community Correctional Center, as well as allocated $15 million each for 150-bed units for the jails in Hilo and on Maui and Kauai.
Additionally, he said, lawmakers approved the site selection process for the proposed replacement of the notoriously overcrowded OCCC.
For 2017 the DPS is proposing to expand the Women’s Community Correctional Center in Kailua. Gov. David Ige’s spending plan calls for $9 million to plan and design a 150-bed unit that will allow all of the women incarcerated at OCCC to move to Kailua, he said.
Takayama said he also hopes to revive a proposal from last year that would create a “mobile court,” allowing the Judiciary to reach out to the homeless in parks and other places where they live. The four-year pilot project would give these mobile judges the latitude to sentence low-level, nonviolent offenders to community service projects, such as picking up litter and removing graffiti.
Takayama also noted that a Legislature-approved task force, led by Hawaii Supreme Court Associate Justice Michael Wilson, is continuing to look at how to improve the correctional system. The panel is tasked with reporting to the Legislature before 2018.
Kat Brady, coordinator of the Community Alliance on Prisons, said the
ACLU’s complaint is right on in describing the shortcomings of Hawaii’s correctional system.
In league with an overly punitive criminal justice system, she said, “we are creating criminals, not addressing public safety.”
Caballero said the state needs to find a way to decrease the number of pretrial detainees who have not been convicted of a crime yet sit in jail for months awaiting trial. These detainees, numbering more than 1,000, account for about 50 percent of the OCCC population and nearly 20 percent of all inmates.
Caballero said Hawaii should follow the lead of states like Alaska, New Jersey, California, Utah and Oklahoma, which have adopted reforms and new policies on bail, crime classification, sentencing, parole and probation. These efforts, he said, have reduced the number of people in jail and prison while actually making communities safer and saving money.
Caballero conceded that the timing of the complaint could be hurt by a Justice Department under new President Donald Trump. But, if nothing else, the complaint could boost the conversation here on reform.
“Whatever happens at the federal level, this is a bombshell in Hawaii,” Brady said. “It exposes everything. It’s not just about one facility; it’s about the whole system. It’s a mess.”
