HILO, Hawai'i — The chronically overcrowded Hawai'i Community Correctional Center in the past two years has racked up a history of eight inmate escapes from what was supposed to be secure custody, a record prison officials acknowledge is the worst of any correctional facility in the state during that period.

That pattern has alarmed the neighborhood around the jail, while crowding in the jail has raised concerns that the state may be increasingly vulnerable to court challenges over conditions.

Prison experts say there is often a link between overcrowding, escapes and violence within jails and prisons, and inmates in HCCC or people who spent time there recently complain of extreme crowding.

There were fires at HCCC in 2003 and 2004, and Department of Public Safety officials suspect the 2004 fire was set by inmates unhappy because they were housed in an educational program area known as the "fishbowl" that was not designed as a living area.

A lawsuit filed against the state in connection with that fire alleges the "fishbowl" had no toilets, and 40 or more prisoners housed there would relieve themselves in trash cans because they did not have reasonable access to jail bathrooms.

Two inmates escaped from the same area last year in another incident clearly linked to overcrowding. The inmates were held in the fishbowl because there was no cell space available for them, and escaped by breaking out of a window near the vaulted ceiling, climbing onto the roof of the jail and jumping to freedom. Both men were recaptured.

The problems at the jail have rippled out into the community. Cheryl Reis, a retired police major who has lived near the jail since 1977, said she cannot recall a time when there were as many escapes as occurred over the past two years. She said her neighborhood is alarmed and that HCCC needs to make changes.

"It's not a choice here," Reis said. "If the facility is here, the government has a responsibility to keep the rest of the community safe."

Frank Lopez, deputy director of corrections for the Department of Public Safety, said the jail has applied what resources it has to improve security.

"Even one escape is unacceptable for us," Lopez said. He said the jail bolstered internal security and tightened some security features in the building after two breakouts last year in which five inmates fled.

Lopez noted three of the eight escapes over the past two years involved inmates who were being transported outside the jail, and "within our limited resources, we try to ensure that we have two correctional officers transporting" inmates. The department is also trying to secure better vehicles for moving inmates around, he said.

In the most recent escape, inmate Thane Leialoha was shot and killed by a corrections officer April 11 after Leialoha broke out of a prison van in downtown Hilo. Leialoha is believed to have used a smuggled key to get out of his shackles and other restraints, and then kicked the door of the van he was riding in until it bent outward so he could escape.

Leialoha then struggled with a corrections officer outside the van and was shot in the back of the head as he ran away from the officer.

TROUBLE BREWING

Alvin J. Bronstein, former director of the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project, said there likely is a connection between overcrowding at HCCC and the fires and escapes.

"When you have overcrowding, that means you have increased levels of violence as you are seeing at HCCC, you have increased likelihood of escapes, you have potential for tension between prisoners and staff," Bronstein said. "All of those things are trouble spots."

In overcrowded facilities, "the guards are stretched, whatever programs they have are stretched, prisoners spend more time in idleness, and idleness is always a cause of concern," he said. "Every experienced prison official will tell you that when you walk into a prison, if it is a busy prison, it's a safe prison. If it's an idle prison with a lot of crowding, it's a dangerous prison," he said.

Officials with the state Department of Public Safety refused to discuss overcrowding at the jail, citing pending litigation in connection with the jail and the 2004 fire. The department also declined an Advertiser request for an interview with interim HCCC warden Pete McDonald.

Lopez declined to say how often the jail has triple-bunked inmates, again citing pending litigation. But Lopez said HCCC is "the most crowded correctional institution that we have."

Overcrowding at the Hilo jail is so acute on weekends that three times this year it turned away women convicts who had been ordered to serve intermittent sentences there each weekend.

On Friday morning about a half-dozen pretrial inmates were triple-bunked in HCCC's Komohana unit, and about a dozen sentenced inmates were sleeping on mattresses on the floor in the Waianuenue unit because all the bunks there were taken.

In the Punahele unit, at least five cells for pre-trial and sentenced inmates were triple-bunked Friday, and four other sentenced inmates slept on mattresses on the floor of a tiny dayroom.

The inmates in the dayroom declined to be interviewed, but prisoners familiar with that living arrangement said inmates there often must urinate in the drains of the adjoining showers because there are no toilets. To get to a toilet, the inmates must ask a corrections officer to open a door.

Erick Williams, 26, has been in jail for almost 20 days for drunken driving convictions, but said HCCC is so full he has been able to sleep in a bunk only one night. The rest of the time he was on a mattress on the floor, he said.

'36 DAYS ON THE FLOOR'

Tommy Carreira, 46, was in HCCC last week finishing up a sentence for assault and said the jail today is the most crowded he has ever seen it. Cubicles in the Waianuenue unit that are supposed to hold four inmates hold as many as eight, he said.

Both Carreira and David Duncan, a former HCCC inmate who is now at Hawai'i State Hospital in Kane'ohe, have tried to persuade lawyers to help them challenge jail conditions in court.

Duncan, 50, said in his more than four months at HCCC he almost always slept on the floor and was often lying less than a foot from a cell toilet. He said his arm became infected after prison staff gave him a tuberculosis test he wasn't supposed to receive.

Duncan was eventually acquitted of his assault charge because of a mental defect stemming from an old head injury, and he was moved to Hawai'i State Hospital.

"I tell you, that jail, they need to bring a bulldozer and bulldoze that ... jail down and start over," Duncan said.

HCCC's women inmates are now held at the Hale Nani work release center in Pana'ewa to make room for more male inmates in the main facility in urban Hilo, but the Pana'ewa facility is also full.

Elona Keanini, 28, was sent to Hale Nani in May for a parole violation in connection with her forgery and theft convictions, and said the open dormitories were packed.

"For all 36 days, I was on the floor," she said. "Not once I had a bed. I mean, they even ran out of mattresses for us women."

CLASS-ACTION SUITS

HCCC has been the target of two class-action lawsuits in recent years, including one filed in 1998 on behalf of prisoners who alleged the crowding and triple-bunking at the jail had led to unconstitutionally cruel conditions.

That lawsuit over jail conditions was resolved in 2000 after prison officials promised to make "every effort" to limit the number of inmates at the jail and work furlough center to 255; official operating capacity at the jail is 226 inmates.

However, Department of Public Safety records show the jail and furlough center population has regularly topped 300 since then.

On Friday, HCCC had 337 inmates, with another 13 housed in rented space at the Federal Detention Center in Honolulu to ease crowding in Hilo.

Lopez said it is the courts and the Hawai'i Paroling Authority who dictate the population of the jail. "We just don't control our incoming population or the population exiting our facilities," he said. "We take what is assigned to us."

Honolulu lawyer Eric Seitz, who filed the 1998 lawsuit, said the 2004 fire demonstrated the jail was not complying with the terms of the 2000 settlement. Seitz filed a second class-action lawsuit this year on behalf of seven named inmates who were allegedly injured in the fire.

At the time of the fire, "they were overcrowded, they had all these people sleeping in one room, and that's why they got hurt," Seitz said.

Seitz said he believes the jail is also vulnerable to a new lawsuit similar to his 1998 case over conditions.

"They just can't handle that many people with the staff and the facilities that they have available to them," he said.

Bronstein agreed the chronic overcrowding at HCCC leaves the state vulnerable to a lawsuit similar to the ACLU suit that prompted federal court oversight of the O'ahu Community Correctional Center and the Women's Community Correctional Center in the 1980s and 1990s.

The state was required to pay "many, many millions of dollars" to improve those two facilities, and had to pay additional legal fees and monitoring costs of about $10 million, said Bronstein, who was lead counsel for the inmates who sued over conditions at OCCC and WCCC.

CONSULTANT'S WARNING

Carter Goble Associates Inc., a consultant hired by the state to update the Hawai'i correctional master plan, warned in 2003 that the existing jail had an obsolete design, and its location in the middle of a densely developed Hilo neighborhood was too small to accommodate even the current jail population.

Based on inspections of HCCC in 1991 and again in 2003, Carter Goble also warned that "proper custody and security separations of inmates (at HCCC) remains impossible and is worse than in 1991 due to the degree of overcrowding."

After inspecting the facility in 2003, Carter Goble concluded that, "In general the crowding at the main facility in Hilo is worse than was the case in 1991, which only makes the conditions for inmate management safety, security and treatment programs effectiveness in this facility worse."

Lopez said the state made changes since the Carter Goble report, including moving women out of the Waianuenue unit to the Hale Nani Work Release Center in Pana'ewa to free up bed space. Lopez said the state should build a new jail in Kona to ease overcrowding in Hilo, but acknowledged that may be controversial. The administration proposed a 350-bed jail for Kona in late 2004, and Lopez said a consultant has been hired to prepare a request for proposals to invite companies to bid to build and operate it. No site has been selected, he said.

Reis, the longtime neighbor of HCCC, said in the meantime the state needs to build a 16-foot perimeter fence topped with razor wire around HCCC to discourage inmates from planning escapes. Only portions of the facility are fenced today.

Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com.