It’s been more than a month since Daniel Quiral has been able to visit his fiancee, Charlotte Kealoha, an inmate at the Oahu Community Correctional Center.
Kealoha, 49, wrote Monday to the Star-Advertiser saying inmate visits have been canceled since Aug. 11, but inmates have not been provided any explanation.
"Could we possibly get our visits back?" Kealoha writes. "I understand that it is only a privilege, but it would be greatly appreciated to visit our loved ones."
Inmate visits have been suspended for about a month due to a shortage of guards for a host of reasons and the need to rein in overtime due to budgetary constraints, said Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Toni Schwartz.
The warden is "assessing staffing levels" and will attempt to resume visitations this weekend, she said, adding that the monthlong cancellation is unusual, and cancellations are usually just a day here and there.
If someone is sick, someone else has to get overtime, she said.
Kealoha writes, "There are other less fortunate inmates (who) are unable to afford stamp/writing supplies etc., even a landline to phone their loved ones. So they look forward for our visits to happen on a weekly basis."
Quiral said Kealoha is speaking out not only on her behalf, but "on behalf of everybody," since other inmates might not have the courage to do so.
"The kids look forward to seeing their moms too or their fathers" during the visitations, which are only allowed on weekends, he said.
He said other inmates "don’t have the power in them to step forward. A lot of them just curl up in their cell."
Quiral offered a suggestion: "I’m sure they can adjust something, cut down on the group size going in."
Kat Brady, coordinator for the Community Alliance on Prisons, acknowledged the new practice to try to reduce overtime.
"But what really concerns me is that visits are absolutely critical to recidivism," she said. "When someone has visits from family compared to someone who has no visits, recidivism is really lowered. The department has to come up with better ways to have family visits."
Brady said the Department of Public Safety has spent millions of federal dollars in machines to screen people for drugs and contraband. "To me, that reduces the number of human beings having to do pat-downs," she said.
Brady said OCCC, while overpopulated with a population of roughly 1,150 (in July), is not huge.
"It’s not rocket science," she said. "I just don’t know why they make it so difficult. We got to get creative."
She also suggested reducing the number of visitors to make it more manageable.
John Mantanona, Quiral’s friend and a former inmate, said visitations "build up your morale. … These people need this contact from their loved ones. They have to have some compassion. These guys done wrong, but they need their families."
Schwartz said staffing has been an issue even during the week at OCCC, where pretrial detainees are held jailed and others are held in the prison section, including women.
Schwartz said the department’s concern is safety for its guards, visitors and inmates.
She said the Public Safety administration supports OCCC Warden Francis Sequeira in his efforts to address overtime and is working with him to find a solution to the problem.
Schwartz said the department will ask for more positions during the upcoming legislative session.
"If we are able to get extra positions, and more than one calls in sick, we won’t have to do things like this," she said.
