Question: If they relocate OCCC does that mean the Hawaii inmates held on the mainland will come home?
Answer: No, because they generally wouldn’t be held at the Oahu Community Correctional Center even if there was room.
OCCC is a jail that primarily holds pre-trial detainees, detainees sentenced to less than a year and sentenced felon prison inmates who are within a year of release and participating in a re-entry furlough program, said Toni Schwartz, spokeswoman for the state Department of Public Safety.
The 1,351 Hawaii inmates held at the Saguaro Correctional Center in Eloy, Ariz., are serving extended terms. They would be housed at the Halawa Correctional Facility, a state prison, if there was adequate bed space, not at OCCC, Schwartz said. The state has a contract with the Arizona prison to house those inmates.
OCCC, located in Kalihi, held 1,222 people as of Tuesday, double the number for which it was designed and higher than even the 954 it was modified to hold; some inmates are triple-bunked and sleeping on cell floors next to toilets, according to Tuesday’s Honolulu Star-Advertiser.
The Ige administration has made replacing the jail a top priority, and the governor announced Tuesday that he had accepted the final environmental impact statement allowing construction of a new jail on Halawa land now home to the state Department of Agriculture’s animal quarantine station. The new jail would be designed to house 1,335 inmates. Funding for the $525 million project is not assured, according to news reports.
Q: What are sharrows?
A: Sharrows are street markings indicating lanes shared by bicycles and motor vehicles. They have double peaked lines above the image of a bicycle. In Hawaii, sharrows were first used in 2010, on the University of Hawaii at Manoa campus, and have since expanded around the island. We mentioned them in Wednesday’s column, prompting your question, in reference to bikeways proposed for downtown Honolulu.
Marking shared lanes helps bicyclists and motorists travel more safely, according to the Federal Highway Administration’s Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices, the national standard for traffic signs and road markings. The MUTCD says sharrow markings:
>> Assist bicyclists with lateral positioning (side-to-side) in a shared lane that has on-street parallel parking, reducing the chance a bicycle will collide with a parked vehicle’s open door.
>> Assist bicyclists with lateral positioning in lanes that are too narrow for a motor vehicle and a bicycle to travel side by side within the same traffic lane.
>> Alert road users of the lateral location bicyclists are likely to occupy within the travel lane.
>> Encourage safe passing of bicyclists by motorists.
>> Reduce the incidence of wrong-way bicycling.
Auwe
The number of people driving while looking at their cell phones is getting out of control! I saw two near-misses on the H1 freeway today. On the freeway! Where people are driving 60 miles an hour! If HPD can give out more tickets maybe that would help. And give them to tourists too. They should map their routes before getting in the car. — Still shaking
Mahalo
Mahalo to two special young men. On my way home from Oregon, I sat next to brothers Ryder and Nalu, who live on Oahu, are in middle school and were flying on their own. I would like to compliment their parents for raising such courteous and respectful young men. They were very well behaved and it was fun sitting next to them. Being a mother of eight and a grandmother of 21, I am pleased to have met these two. Thank you, Ryder and Nalu, for a pleasant trip home. Thank you also for the candy bar. — Nana Borabora
Write to “Kokua Line” at Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 7 Waterfront Plaza, Suite 210, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., Honolulu 96813; call 529-4773; fax 529-4750; or email kokualine@staradvertiser.com.
