Prison changes a hard sell with guards playing hooky

Gov. Neil Abercrombie was on Hawaii island last month touting his planned overhaul of Hawaii’s prisons to 26 corrections officer recruits hired to reopen the Kulani Correctional Facility in July.

The governor told the new prison guards they’re in on the ground floor of "new opportunities" for prison-related employment in his six-year drive to bring home some 2,000 Hawaii inmates housed on the mainland.

To create space, he told of grand plans to build new facilities on the neighbor islands and gain more beds on Oahu by giving the Oahu Community Correctional Center site in Kalihi to developers in exchange for a bigger jail elsewhere.

Abercrombie said of the recruits, "They’re going to be part of an initiative towards the complete revamping and reorientation of the corrections program."

Let’s hope the reality on future weekends won’t be a bunch of the new guards sitting home on sick leave watching football while the others score overtime covering for them.

Sick leave abuse is the cancerous underside of Hawaii’s prison system, going on year after year, administration after adminis­tration.

This should be the first prison reform, but there’s no sign it’s even in the plan.

During 21⁄2 months since January, 20 of 24 weekend visitation days at OCCC were canceled, mostly because too many guards called in sick.

On Super Bowl Sunday, 68 OCCC guards were out sick, one-third of those scheduled to work. Annual overtime costs at OCCC alone are nearly $3 million.

Public Safety Director Ted Sakai says "it’s difficult for us to do anything about it" because state rules don’t require guards to document their illness unless they’re out five consecutive days.

It costs about $130 per bed per day to incarcerate prisoners in Hawaii, compared with about $80 in Arizona — largely because of higher labor costs.

That’s OK if higher labor costs are to pay fair wages and benefits for a difficult job, but not OK if a good part pays for sick leave abuse and excessive overtime.

The main reason given for returning prisoners from Arizona is the rehabilitation benefits of keeping them close to family, but what’s the point of incurring the cost if they seldom see loved ones anyway because too many guards are out sick?

Another driving force is the unhappiness of the guards union, United Public Workers, over the jobs lost in sending a third of our inmates to the mainland.

Abercrombie’s proposed overhaul gives him leverage to get the UPW involved in ending the abuse if it wants the prisoners home — and the work.

If the governor, Legislature and union won’t change laws, contracts and attitudes to finally fix this problem, there’s no reason the public should support the massive cost of expanding a dysfunctional system.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com or blog.volcanicash.net.