The size of a planned new jail on Oahu is being trimmed 20% in anticipation of the state being able to lease more space at an underutilized federal detention center in Honolulu.
The state Department of
Corrections and Rehabilitation is now pursuing a new 800-bed jail to replace its 954-bed Oahu Community Correctional Center, where conditions have been described as abhorrent.
DCR Director Tommy Johnson shared the revised vision for the new jail long planned in Halawa with members of the state House of Representatives during an informational briefing Tuesday.
A smaller facility, which reduces the previously envisioned 1,000-bed jail’s roughly estimated $1.1 billion cost, is envisioned in conjunction with a tentative arrangement for
DCR to lease 300 beds at the Federal Detention Center
Honolulu, up from 100 currently.
Johnson told the House panel that a memorandum of agreement for such use is up for review by federal attorneys, and that availability of space is not an issue.
“The FDC has never been fully operational,” Johnson said, explaining that the high-rise complex that opened in 2001 can hold up to 1,100 detainees but currently houses about 300 and has never held more than 500.
Some operational changes that would need to be made with DCR’s added use of the federal facility include increasing medical staff and adding programs that OCCC provides, such as substance abuse
treatment and academic
education.
Johnson told members of the House Committee on Public Safety that private consultants and the state Department of Accounting and General Services involved with design work on the new jail have not yet determined how much less an 800-bed facility might cost.
DCR intends to seek $287.5 million as part of its budget request to lawmakers during the next legislative session, which begins in January, to pay for some of the construction.
Whether DAGS pursues a low-bid construction contract or some other arrangement that could include a public-private partnership where a private developer helps design, build, finance and possibly even maintain the jail, hasn’t been
decided.
The requested funding would be for the fiscal year that begins July 1, 2028, which Johnson said would allow construction of a new jail to be completed in late 2031 or in 2032.
DCR and a predecessor agency have been trying for more than two decades to replace OCCC, which was largely built in the early 1980s but still has features dating to 1916. DCR has
described the jail as an abhorrent, obsolete and dilapidated facility that is unfit for inmates and staff.
OCCC was designed for 628 beds, though adjustments were made to fit about 950 beds in overcrowded conditions. Johnson said Tuesday that slightly over 900 people were housed in the jail, which is generally for pre-trial detainees along with convicted inmates with less than 12 months to serve.
Progress to replace OCCC has been slow in part due to funding decisions, a shifting vision and opposition largely from criminal justice system reform advocates over the jail’s size.
DCR has received about $55 million mainly from the Legislature in pieces over the past decade to advance work that has included site analyses and selection, creation of a master plan, community outreach, an environmental impact statement and preliminary facility designs.
The agency also commissioned a study in 2022 from the University of Hawaii Community Design Center to explore alternative models for a new jail. The resulting 268-page “Breaking Cycles” report delivered in 2025 includes aspirational visions and jail design
features derived in part from 120 community “talk story” sessions, 24 workshops and three symposiums.
DCR has incorporated some elements from the UH report into its plans for the new jail, including more education and health programming space, green spaces, more natural light, calming interior space colors, a garden, a staff lounge and gym, public art and art produced by inmates.
An earlier plan by DCR called for a new 1,300-bed jail next to its Halawa Correctional Center medium-security prison. Then a change was made to remove a 300-bed transition center within the jail for use by inmates preparing for community reentry.
Now, 240 transition beds are planned for a new facility to be built near the existing jail on the site of DCR’s 120-bed Laumaka work furlough facility. The agency plans to ask the Legislature for $130 million in the fiscal year beginning July 1, 2027, to fund construction of this new reintegration facility.
Earlier this year, the House and Senate adopted a resolution to have the Hawaii Correctional System Oversight Commission form a 13-member advisory committee that would recommend “alternative models for rehabilitation and restorative justice on Oahu” for DCR to consider integrating into its plans for a new jail.
That committee has so far met once, and Christin Johnson, the commission’s oversight coordinator, told the House panel on Tuesday that committee members are concerned that their ideas may be ignored.
“We are a little bit nervous about that,” she said. “We don’t want the work to go to waste.”
One idea from the committee is for corrections officers to provide “dynamic security” involving more close interaction with the jail population, including having meals together.
The oversight coordinator said closer interaction can improve the health and care of the jail population, and she expressed concern about DCR’s estimate that it can run the new planned jail with fewer than 300 personnel compared with 412 for OCCC.
DCR’s director said
OCCC’s obsolete design requires more staff, and that the interaction ratio between the population of a new jail and staff should not materially change.
The House committee chaired by Rep. Della Au Belatti (D, Makiki-Punchbowl) spent a lot of time discussing to what extent the anticipated capacity needs for a new jail could be reduced if prosecutors and courts send offenders, especially those with mental health issues, to alternate care facilities instead of incarcerating them.
The committee’s vice chair, Rep. Kim Coco
Iwamoto (D, Ala Moana-Kakaako-Downtown), asked if such diversion efforts or other criminal justice system reforms could perhaps even eliminate the need to build a new jail on Oahu.
Johnson, the DCR director, said diversion efforts are dictated by county prosecutors and state courts, and that more alternate care facilities need to be created.
“We do not control the (size of the jail) population,” he said. “We have to take everybody that is sent to us.” He also said OCCC can’t be rehabilitated.
