HB2685

SECTION 1. The legislature finds that Hawaii's correctional system is bursting at the seams with a swelling inmate population. Since 1995, the department of public safety has been transporting prisoners to facilities in Oklahoma, Texas, Oregon, Minnesota, Arizona, and Tennessee. As of January 7, 2008, there were two thousand fifty-nine Hawaii inmates housed at out-of-state contracted correctional facilities. That number is more than half of Hawaii's prison population. Although sending Hawaii inmates away to other states is a temporary solution, the State cannot afford to transport inmates to mainland facilities indefinitely.

According to the department of public safety's 2006 annual report, forty-eight per cent of male inmates and sixty-one per cent of female inmates are classified as minimum security risk or are considered community custody. These inmates qualify to be housed at a minimum security prison or be supervised in the community. However, due to budget constraints, the State has only two minimum-security prisons, Waiawa correctional facility on Oahu and Kulani correctional facility on the island of Hawaii. Both Waiawa and Kulani often exceed their operational capacity.

The legislature further finds that in 2001, the federal Bureau of Prisons opened a 325,000 square foot, $63,000,000 detention center at 351 Elliot Street on the island of Oahu. Constructed by Dick Pacific Construction and located on the west side of the Honolulu international airport, the Federal Detention Center has a capacity of six hundred seventy beds on five levels of a seven floor facility. In addition, most of the beds can be converted to double bunks to increase capacity.

The Honolulu Federal Detention Center has integrated state-of-the-art surveillance and management technologies, allowing a single worker to monitor a wing of sixty-four beds, and staff to "quick freeze" individually packed meals up to forty-eight hours in advance for refrigeration and later reheating and serving.

Furthermore, because of its location within urban Honolulu, high visibility from the H-1 freeway, local roads nearby, and air traffic landing and taking off within its vicinity, the Honolulu Federal Detention Center was designed to meet all federal correctional facility standards without looking like a prison. It was also designed to accommodate a wide variety of uses, including inmate cells, office areas, medical facilities, recreational areas, storage rooms, food preparation areas, laundry, mechanical rooms, security, and communications.

The entire center consists of two buildings -- a twelve-story main tower with a two-story administration base and a single-story warehouse and receiving building. The center also includes a one hundred eighty-two-stall parking area fronting the main tower.

The structures sit atop a coral ledge with controlled low strength material used to fill weak spots to ensure adequate support, a technique which shortened the building foundation schedule. A total of twenty-five thousand cubic yards of cast-in-place and precast concrete was utilized on the project.

Upon its opening in 2001, the Honolulu Federal Detention Center had set aside approximately two hundred beds for state pretrial inmates as a means of easing overcrowding at the Oahu community correctional facility. The State currently has two hundred sixty-five Hawaii pretrial detainees at the Federal Detention Center.

The legislature further finds that the Oahu community correctional center is the largest jail in the State and is situated on sixteen acres in urban Honolulu. The Oahu community correctional center has a history of overcrowding and currently houses nearly fourteen hundred male and female inmates, including pretrial detainees, persons arrested who cannot make bail, persons being held without bail until their trials, and felons and misdemeanants who have been sentenced to less than one year of incarceration. Although the Oahu community correctional facility was originally designed for nine hundred fifty-four inmates, it has an operational capacity of nine hundred fifty-four. It is not a functional facility, as it cannot accommodate the size of its current population, which has consistently been between thirteen hundred and fourteen hundred inmates.

According to the department of public safety, Hawaii's prison population has grown significantly. The table below reflects the growth of Hawaii's inmate population from 1980 to 2005.

Year Inmate Population

1980 926

1985 2,045

1990 2,625

1995 3,583

2000 5,127

2005 6,092

The purpose of this Act is to direct the department of public safety and the office of planning to plan and design the construction and operation of a new minimum-security facility at the site of the existing Oahu community correctional center, similar to the facilities of the Honolulu Federal Detention Center, to manage the continued growth of Hawaii's inmate population.

SECTION 2. The department of public safety and the office of planning shall plan and design the construction and operation of a new minimum-security facility at the site of the existing Oahu community correctional center, similar to the facilities of the Honolulu Federal Detention Center. The department of public safety shall submit a status report to the legislature not later than twenty days before the convening of the 2009 regular session, setting forth the results and recommendations of the plan, including, but not limited to:

(1) The transitional housing of inmates while construction of the new facility takes place; and

(2) The cost of preparing an environmental impact statement in accordance with chapter 343.

SECTION 3. The director of finance is authorized to issue general obligation bonds in the sum of $ or so much thereof as may be necessary and the same sum or so much thereof as may be necessary is appropriated for fiscal year 2008-2009 for the planning and design of a minimum-security correctional facility at the site of the Oahu community correctional center.

SECTION 4. The appropriation made for the capital improvement project authorized by this Act shall not lapse at the end of the fiscal biennium for which the appropriation is made; provided that all moneys from the appropriation unencumbered as of June 30, 2010, shall lapse as of that date.

The sum appropriated shall be expended by the department of public safety for the purposes of this Act.

SECTION 5. This Act shall take effect on July 1, 2008.

INTRODUCED BY:	_____________________________

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES	H.B. NO.	2685
TWENTY-FOURTH LEGISLATURE, 2008
STATE OF HAWAII