Honolulu lawmakers and local designers are pressing the state to scrap fortress-style plans for the replacement of the Oʻahu Community Correctional Center and instead back a jail that looks and functions more like a rehabilitation campus than a razor-wire compound. The fight is heating up as officials move to replace the century-old Kalihi facility at a state-owned site in Hālawa and as a University of Hawaiʻi design study lays out a very different vision. With construction costs and bed counts competing against demands for treatment and reentry services, the choice will shape how Honolulu handles incarceration for decades.
The University of Hawaiʻi Community Design Center’s 268-page “Breaking Cycles” study calls for natural light, a central green courtyard, dedicated treatment rooms and smaller housing modules in place of guard towers, chain-link fencing and rows of bunked cells, according to the Office of the Governor. Built on more than 120 community talk-story sessions and workshops, the report frames every design decision around rehabilitation and restorative justice. The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, or DCR, says it has already folded many of those principles into schematic plans for the Hālawa site, according to the project’s public materials.
DCR Director Tommy Johnson told lawmakers that his team is planning for roughly a 1,000-bed facility to house the more than 900 people currently in custody, and he warned that the price tag has surged. A 2017 estimate of about $537 million has ballooned to more than $900 million, and every month of delay could add an estimated 4 million to 6 million dollars in cost escalation, according to testimony submitted to the Legislature. Department leaders argue that a program-heavy layout, with multipurpose classrooms, treatment rooms and staff wellness areas, could eventually cut overtime, streamline staffing and improve outcomes for people moving through the system…