A bill to prohibit male correctional officers from conducting pat-downs of female inmates across Hawaii’s jail and prison systems passed through the Senate Judiciary Committee last week.

Senate Bill 2777 and its companion, House Bill 2435, also would require male correctional officers to announce their arrival upon entering a female housing unit and would prohibit them from being in areas where they might view female inmates in a state of undress.

Exceptions may be made if there is an inmate who is at risk of escape, poses an immediate risk of harming herself or others, or if there is a medical emergency in the area and there is no female correctional employee available to resolve the situation in a timely manner, or conduct a search, according to the bills.

SB 2777 also would require the state Department of Public Safety to increase its recruitment of female corrections officers to fill unmet gender-specific posts.

“Having men watch women take showers, having them strip-search women — it’s a no-brainer that this is a bad idea,” said criminologist and retired University of Hawaii professor Meda Chesney-Lind. “But we need to make this explicit.”

Chesney-Lind is also former president of the American Society of Criminology and an author of books regarding imprisoned women.

DPS said in written testimony that the national Prison Rape Elimination Act already addresses concerns of both the House and Senate bills. The act also requires reports of sexual harassment of female inmates.

According to the Prison Rape Elimination Act’s 2020 findings, the Women’s Community Correctional Center in Kailua had five reports of sexual abuse by staff, two of which were substantiated. It also had one substantiated report of sexual harassment by staff.

When asked about cases of sexual harassment that might go unreported, Chesney-Lind told the Honolulu Star- Advertiser, “Virtually all of it, because there’s very few protections for (incarcerated) women.”

Carrie Anne Shirota, policy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii, told the Star- Advertiser, “There is also a tremendous fear of retaliation,” which leads to unreported cases of sexual assault and harassment.

“If you think about jail and prison as an institution, it is based upon power and control, where correctional officer staff can control your every movement,” Shirota said.

Officers can control inmates’ visitations or recreation time, she said.

Shirota recalled one woman in a correctional facility who came forward about her sexual assault and the guard who assaulted her.

“The correctional officer was threatening her and withholding food in order to subject her to harassment,” Shirota said.

Chesney-Lind said inmates’ backgrounds also work against them when they try to come forward about assault or harassment.

“If they were to go to court, they would have histories that many juries would find problematic in terms of credibility because a lot of them would have engaged in sex work or have a history of sex work,” Chesney-Lind said.

So most cases that go to trial are unsuccessful, she said.

Female inmate populations are filled with people who have previously endured sexual assault or harassment prior to incarceration, Shirota said. To subject inmates to pat-downs by the opposite gender further endangers their mental health and safety, she said.

DPS continues to recruit female correction officers.

“The Department has made no secret over the years about the shortage of female applicants to fill the gender specific posts,” Toni Schwartz, DPS’ spokesperson, wrote in an email to the Star-Advertiser.

The department’s Human Resources and Development job-seeker page has continuous postings for “female only vacancies,” Schwartz said.

PREA standards also mandate that jails and prisons report why they hired a male guard if a female guard was available.

Chesney-Lind cited a 1997 survey included in Amnesty International’s report “Not Part of My Sentence” that said, “On average 41 percent of the correctional officers working with female inmates are men.”

“Not Part of My Sentence” was conducted before the act was created.

The PREA was signed into law in 2003 over concerns of male-on-male sexual assault and harassment in America’s jails and prisons and does not specifically address the concerns of female inmates who could be mothers or pregnant, Chesney-Lind said.

“This is why we need to get past PREA to get to some state statutes that make it very explicit,” Chesney-Lind said. “Because these are things that happen all the time, especially when you’re short-staffed.”