I’m wondering if Hawaii prisons could be relocated to remote areas away from the urban-core population.

The land would be much cheaper, as some areas might not be suitable for agriculture or housing development, due to the distance from other amenities.

There could be a chapel-sized courtroom constructed in the complex to conduct court business. The judicial staff could be transported to the complex in government or privately owned vehicles.

The courtroom could have video links to a computer system to process the information.

It seems like it would be much safer to transport judicial staff to the hearings, instead of having to handcuff and manacle prisoners to deliver them to the urban-core courts.

The courtroom could include glass-enclosed areas to separate the prison population from other members of the judicial process.

Maybe we wouldn’t need to waste millions of taxpayer dollars on study after study to figure out how to expand our jails.

Ann Brewer

Waialua

Waiawa prison proves not all prisons are bad

Regarding the conditions in the prison system of Hawaii: I noticed that just about every facility is criticized for their deplorable conditions. But that is not true for the Waiawa Correctional Facility.

The Waiawa Correctional Facility is one of the most amazing correctional facilities one can imagine.

There is no overcrowding, nobody sleeps on the floor and it’s very clean.

The correctional officers are some of the most humane people you will ever encounter.

The medical unit staff are wonderful people, very professional and caring. They will go out of their way to see that all the inmates’ needs are met.

Kitchen staffers are very decent people — especially Janice, who runs the kitchen and does most of the cooking.

The administration personnel are equally very professional and very warm and caring people.

You have to acknowledge this facility because there is none like it.

Please let everyone out there know that not everything is bad or lost in the penal system of Hawaii.

Cruz Martinez

Waiawa Correctional Facility

Equating mileage tax to gas tax easy to figure

The state has a 16 cents-per-gallon gas tax. It is proposing a mileage tax instead.

So what is the equivalent mileage tax?

Although there is no direct correlation, the following will give an idea of what we should be looking at if a mileage tax replaced the gas tax.

For this example, I will assume a 20-miles-per-gallon average. A car that travels 10,000 miles a year at 20 mpg uses 500 gallons for the year. At 16 cents per gallon, the gas tax on this car would be $80.

So the equivalent cost per mile tax would be $80 divided by 10,000 miles, or $0.008 or 0.8 cents per mile, under the new mileage tax system.

Is this really worth a $4 million federal grant and a $1.5 million state expenditure to study this? It’s not rocket science.

Rob Rietow

Nuuanu