The ACLU of Hawaii will ask the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate conditions at a privately run prison in Arizona following the murder of a Hawaii inmate in May and a stabbing of another Hawaii prisoner last month, according to an ACLU staffer.
Carrie Ann Shirota, policy director for the ACLU of Hawaii, also cited drug smuggling at the Saguaro Correctional Center, where there have been at least two drug-related inmate deaths in recent months. A prison staff member was arrested in June for allegedly smuggling methamphetamine into the facility.
Shirota also told the Hawaii Correctional System Oversight Commission Thursday the state needs to develop a strategy to finally return Hawaii’s inmates to their home state.
She cited other murders of Hawaii inmates at Saguaro, including Bronson Nunuha and Clifford Medina in 2010, and Johnathan Namauleg in 2015.
“Given the pattern of 20-plus years of this occurring, there should be an external investigation of this,” Shirota said in an interview. She said the ACLU plans to approach Hawaii’s congressional delegation first to ask them to help convince the U.S. Department of Justice to launch an inquiry at Saguaro.
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Director Tommy Johnson said in an interview that “in any prison setting, you’re going to unfortunately have assaults, death, and people trying to smuggle drugs into the facility, and when you have that, you’re going to have overdoses.”
“So I don’t think we can paint Saguaro with a broad brush because I think when you look at Saguaro compared to other facilities — including our own — their rates of assault and serious incidents is far less than what we have in this state, and I think less than most state institutions across the country,” he said.
Saguaro prison in Eloy, Arizona is run by CoreCivic, formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America, which is the largest private prison operator in the nation.
Hawaii has been holding prison inmates in various mainland facilities since the mid-1990s because there is no room for them in Hawaii facilities. Hawaii now houses about 1,000 inmates at Saguaro, and Johnson said the state paid about $40 million last fiscal year to hold prisoners there.
The latest concerns about Saguaro are being fueled by the death of 46-year-old Anton Myklebust, who was beaten and strangled in his cell at Saguaro on May 4.
Weeks later Daniel Kosi, 51, was repeatedly stabbed at Saguaro after other inmates obtained keys to one part of the facility and attacked Kosi in his cell. Family members said he was stabbed some 50 times but survived the attack.
Johnson said both of those attacks are under investigation by both Hawaii and Arizona authorities, and said he cannot comment further.
The issue of drug trafficking in Saguaro surfaced with the arrest of prison staffer Patricia Fay West in June after she allegedly tried to smuggle methamphetamine into the prison in her bra. Authorities alleged they found two pounds of meth in a search of West’s home after her arrest.
Richard Keokeo Taylor Jr. was found dead in his cell last fall with meth in his system in a case that was blamed in part on meth abuse, and a 39-year-old Idaho inmate named Clark Cleveland also died at Saguaro on June 17 in a case that was blamed on “acute methamphetamine intoxication.”
Johnson said that “again, I think smuggling will occur in any correctional facility where staff are compromised by the lure of the money that drugs will bring.”
“I don’t think that Saguaro is an aberration. I don’t think Saguaro is any different than any other facility,” he said, but added he has raised concerns about drugs in the facility with the Saguaro management.
CoreCivic has deployed drug-sniffing dogs more frequently at Saguaro, and that is how West was stopped and arrested as she entered the prison, he said.
Johnson also disclosed during the oversight commission meeting on Thursday that his department fined CoreCivic $68,000 for failing to maintain contractually required staffing at the prison in 2022, but said the company promptly fixed the problem when Hawaii officials called them on it.
But Shirota said there is “a pattern and practice of constitutional violations at Saguaro,” and said she is concerned with the longer history of Hawaii’s contracts with CoreCivic and other mainland prison operators.
“This is a pattern and it’s continuing,” she said. “We’re having this same exact conversation about needing to have more oversight, having people go over and do these checklists, but the outcomes are the outcomes. People are being stabbed, people are being killed, drugs are being smuggled in, and so there really is no accountability.”
“We need to have an exit plan to bring everybody home,” Shirota said.
Original article found at: https://www.civilbeat.org/2024/08/aclu-wants-federal-authorities-to-prob...