Riot, COVID prompt changes at jail facility in Wailuku
WAILUKU — In Module A at the Maui Community Correctional Center, where a riot caused damages three years ago, tables and stools are bolted to the ground in a central seating area.
A television is secured near the top of a wall.
Along with telephones attached to the wall, Global Tel Link tablets are available for inmates to use to make video and phone calls.
“Everything is the way it is for a purpose,” said Major Manny Labasan, chief of security at the Wailuku jail. “It’s for their safety and our safety.”
During a media tour of the jail Thursday, Labasan and acting Warden Liane Endo discussed changes prompted by the March 11, 2019, riot as well as the COVID-19 pandemic.
On Thursday, the jail housed 305 inmates, which is 1 percent above its operational capacity of 301. The count is down by about 25 percent from the 411 inmates at the jail at the time of the riot, which started when Module B inmates refused to leave a common area to return to their cells.
The inmates broke fire sprinklers and started a fire in the common area of the module, and smoke drifted into an adjacent module. Rioting also broke out in Module A, which sustained less damage.
Flooding and injuries were reported before the riot was contained about three hours after it started.
More than $5 million was appropriated for emergency repairs after the riot, which officials said was spurred by overcrowding and disruptions including broken telephones.
Now, seats and tables are bolted to the ground in the module to prevent them from being used as weapons, as they were during the riot, Labasan said.
On Thursday, 68 inmates were housed in the medium-security Module A, which has 24 cells, Endo said. She said each cell has two bunk beds and can hold up to four inmates. One cell was empty Thursday and only a couple held four inmates, Endo said. She said other cells housed two or three inmates.
Adult Corrections Officer Isaac
de la Nux said some inmates choose to sleep on the ground in the cells, in some cases because they don’t like to sleep on the top bunk. Some like to sleep by the door so they can look out the window or watch television, he said.
Along with allowing inmates to make calls, the GTL tablets are used for educational programs, Labasan said.
“That’s a big plus,” he said. “They did it because of COVID, but they probably could have been thinking in those terms years ago. You always get into trouble when you have too much time on your hands.”
Maui Community Correctional Center’s 7 acres includes Dormitory 3, which was built before the old Maui Jail property was transferred
to the state.
The dorm used to house Maui Drug Court participants who started the program of treatment and supervision in jail. Because of COVID, the in-custody portion of Drug Court stopped, Endo said.
The dorm was renovated and is now a less-restrictive housing area for female inmates. “This is one of the nicer dorms,” she said.
The dorm, with two rows of five bunk beds each, was at capacity Thursday with 20 women, including both sentenced and pretrial inmates, Endo said.
The former women’s dormitory now houses men in the work furlough program, which was restarted in the spring after being stopped during the pandemic, Endo said.
Work furlough inmates are segregated from other inmates. “Because of COVID,
we had to make an adjustment,” Endo said.
Eighteen men who leave the jail to go to work, then return at the end of their work days, are housed in Dorm 5. In adjoining Dorm 4 are work furlough inmates who are looking for jobs.
All are regularly tested for COVID, Labasan said.
In the current job market, “there’s opportunities for these guys to get jobs,” Labasan said. He said one inmate who was incarcerated for decades “got a job right off the bat.”
Work furlough inmates have been sentenced for felony crimes and have completed programs to earn the right to participate, Endo said. Depending on how many hours inmates work, they can earn resocialization passes to spend time with friends and family members, she said.
Some work furlough inmates can transition to extended furlough, where they live and work outside the jail and check in regularly with a case manager, Endo said. She said such inmates need family support and funds to afford housing.
Another part of the jail includes a room that had been used for contact visits before those were stopped with COVID. Now the room is
used for videoconferencing for inmates to appear in court and at monthly parole board hearings. At other times, the room is used for mentoring and religious programs.
The jail also offers classes in parenting and domestic violence, cognitive behavioral thinking, obtaining the equivalent of a high school diploma and Blender 3D animation, as well as yoga for women.
“It all runs until COVID hits,” Labasan said. “Then when COVID hits we adjust.”
There were no COVID cases at the jail Thursday, after two COVID clusters last year and another outbreak in January.