Animal Quarantine Station site marked for new Oahu jail

The preferred location for Oahu’s new jail is the Animal Quarantine Station site in Halawa Valley, and the latest cost estimate for the project is $525 million, according to the project’s draft environmental impact statement.

Gov. David Ige held a news conference Wednesday to announce the tentative site selection for the replacement facility for the aging and inefficient Oahu Community Correctional Center in Kalihi, noting that he promised in his 2016 State of the State address to relocate the state’s largest jail.

“I’m confident that we will be able to build a modern facility at the Animal Quarantine Station that relieves long-standing overcrowding and is secure, efficient and cost-effective,” Ige said.

A handful of protesters gathered outside Ige’s office during the announcement to argue that OCCC is large enough and that a new jail is not needed. Carrie Anne Shirota of the Hawaii Justice Coalition said the state is “deliberately passing criminal justice policies that increase the incarcerated population.”

“If we followed suit with other states and jurisdictions like New York, New Jersey, North Dakota, California — they’ve significantly reduced their incarcerated populations by smart justice policies, and they’ve done it over less than 10 years, and they’ve saved money and reinvested in programs and services that work,” Shirota said.

“We’re putting all this money into planning, and we’re wasting money, because other states have averted prison construction, saved money, and also decreased crime at the same time,” she said. “So, if we’re really interested in building a safer community, we need to invest in what works, and building more prisons is not the solution.”

Aging facility

State lawmakers for years have wanted to replace OCCC, arguing the jail’s 16-acre site in urban Honolulu along the planned city rail line ought to be redeveloped.

The aging OCCC is also extremely overcrowded. The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice asking it to investigate the crowded conditions, alleging they amount to unconstitutional “cruel and unusual punishment.”

The new jail would be for men only, and the 140 women now held at OCCC would be moved to the Women’s Community Correctional Center in Kailua. The cost of adding bed space for those women at WCCC is not included in the $525 million price tag for the new jail.

The state Department of Agriculture’s quarantine station property straddles the H-3 freeway, and was rated considerably higher than the other potential sites in part because it is close to the existing Halawa Correctional Facility.

That location would make it easier for the existing prison and the proposed new jail to share some services, and the evaluation also found the quarantine property is convenient for moving inmates to downtown Honolulu courthouses. The site also has “compatible surrounding land uses,” according to a report by a consultant hired to identify and evaluate the various sites.

The quarantine property has a buildable land area of about 25 acres, and is already owned by the state, which also helped boost the site in the rankings, according to a consultant’s report. The size of the property would allow for a low-rise design for the new jail, which is more efficient to operate and would save the state hundreds of millions of dollars in construction costs.

A consultant’s report earlier this year listed preliminary cost estimates for the new jail ranging from $433 million for a low-rise facility to $673 million if a high-rise jail were built at the Halawa prison property.

OCCC currently costs $67.3 million a year to operate, and the state could save an estimated $4.8 million a year in reduced staffing costs by developing a more modern low-rise facility, according to the consultants.

Consultants at work

The selection process is being managed by a team that includes Architects Hawaii Ltd. and subcontractor Louis Berger U.S. under a $4.9 million planning and design contract with the state.

The consultants have also produced a jail population forecast that concluded the number of male detainees at OCCC will drop from 1,271 today to 959 in 2026. To house those inmates, the consultants proposed that the new facility have 1,044 detention beds.

The new OCCC is also expected to house low-security, prerelease male inmates who are preparing to leave the prison system. The new facility will need 336 beds to house those inmates, according to the report.

House Public Safety Committee Chairman Gregg Takayama said he supports the jail project because he believes it will be large enough to accommodate a separate facility within the new jail for nonviolent drug offenders, which Takayama believes is needed.

“We do know … that mixing nonviolent drug offenders with violent offenders leads to the drug offenders becoming violent offenders when they return to the community, so separate them, build it smaller,” he said. He said the area for drug offenders should be a dormitory-style facility.

The draft impact statement is available through the state Office of Environmental Quality Control’s website at health.hawaii.gov/oeqc/ (scroll down and click on “Online Library of EAs and EISs” on the right side of the page).

The public comment period for the impact statement began Wednesday and will end Jan. 8.

Public Safety officials will also hold a meeting on the project to allow for public input, 7 p.m. Nov. 29 at the Aloha Stadium Hospitality Room at 99-500 Salt Lake Blvd.

Draft Environmental Impact Statement for OCCC replacement by Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Scribd