They made it.

The population of the Oahu Community Correctional Center was reduced to 1,263 yesterday, meeting and beating a court-ordered deadline to reduce the number of inmates, prison officials said today.

As of 11 last night, officials counted inmates at the Kalihi prison and found there were seven below the ceiling of 1,270 set in a June court agreement with the American Civil Liberties Union.

After “a hectic final day” of inmate shifting and releases, some 110 inmates were transferred, put on parole, released on bail, or otherwise discharged, prison spokesman Chapman Lam said. Of those, 78 were transferred within the system and 32 were released, he said. He said the transfers were difficult because of the “strict need to carefully match each inmate to a facility by classification and behavior.” While some prisoners could be shifted to minimum-security areas, others required tighter supervision.

The deadline and the population limit were set by the U.S. District Court after the ACLU sued the state, charging that the prison was overcrowded and therefore conditions were unconstitutional. At that time, the OCCC population was 1,436.

ACLU executive director Vanessa Chong said this morning that the organization was pleased the state met the deadline.

“It was what we expected,” she said.

Inmates were transferred to a minimum- security Waiawa Correction Center in Leeward Oahu; Kulani Correctional Facility on the Big Island; the Halawa High Security Facility; and Kauai Community Correctional Facility.

The ACLU had criticized the state for waiting until the final day to fulfill the order.

“They’ve had since June 12 to reduce the population,” Chong said. “They knew what the deadlines were. They had the time to organize.”

“We certainly did not deliberately wait,” Lam said. “We hustled to the maximum extent possible.”…

Lam said prison overpopulation is not just a corrections division problem. The entire criminal justice system has to take an even more active role in helping to keep prison population within limits, Lam said.

Every Sunday, “Back in the Day” looks at an article that ran on this date in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin. The items are verbatim, so don’t blame us today for yesteryear’s bad grammar