For the second time in two years, improper actions by a corrections worker caused cell doors to unexpectedly open in a Mainland prison where Hawai'i inmates were supposed to be kept separated, triggering violence that injured a Hawai'i convict, prison officials said.

In the first incident at a Mississippi prison in 2005, Hawai'i convict Ronnie Lonoaea, 34, was beaten so severely that he suffered brain damage and is now confined to a wheelchair. Lonoaea's family sued the Hawai'i prison system and Corrections Corp. of America last week in connection with the case.

In a second incident last month at Red Rock Correctional Center in Arizona, an error by a prison staffer caused cell doors to abruptly open, prison officials said. Hawai'i inmate John Kupa, 36, was stabbed in the left lower back, according to a police report.

The two incidents raise concerns about the treatment of Hawai'i inmates in Mainland prisons run by a private company, said an expert on prisons and a state legislator.

In the Arizona case, cell doors abruptly opened on June 26 in a prison pod where protective custody inmates are housed in some cells and general population inmates including gang members are held in other cells.

Kupa was stabbed with a homemade knife after the doors opened at about 6 p.m., according to a report from the Eloy, Ariz., police department. The injured inmate was treated and released at a local hospital, according to a prison spokeswoman.

In the Mississippi prison incident, 20 cell doors suddenly opened at 2:48 a.m. on July 17, 2005.

About three dozen Hawai'i inmates were released from their cells when the doors opened, touching off a melee that lasted for 90 minutes in a disciplinary pod in the Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility. Corrections officers finally used tear gas grenades to regain control of the pod.

Hawai'i Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Louise Kim McCoy said an internal investigation of the Mississippi case found the doors opened because a corrections sergeant had been "compromised" by prison gang members. Corrections Corp. of America, which owns both the Mississippi and the Arizona prison, terminated the sergeant, McCoy said in a written response to questions.

Steve Owen, director of marketing for CCA, declined to discuss the specifics of the June 26 incident and also declined comment on the lawsuit over the Tallahatchie incident.

PRIVATE VS. PUBLIC

Byron E. Price, assistant professor of public policy and administration at Rutgers University and author of a book on the private prison industry, said Hawai'i has reason to be concerned about the incidents at Tallahatchie and Red Rock.

Private prison operators make money by holding down costs, which is often accomplished by reducing labor costs, said Price. The companies tend to rely heavily on technology as a way to keep the officer-to-inmate ratios down, Price said. Private prison staff members are typically inexperienced, he added.

"By cutting labor costs, you get a less qualified individual, and there's high turnover rate in the private prisons, and they conduct less training for their corrections officers" compared with publicly run prisons, said Price, who is author of "Merchandizing Prisoners: Who Really Pays for Prison Privatization?"

Corrections Yearbook statistics show the staff turnover at private prisons averages 52 percent a year, while the turnover at public prisons is about 16 percent, he said.

Hawai'i spends more than $50 million a year to house inmates in CCA prisons on the Mainland, and Senate Public Safety Committee Chairman Will Espero said he is concerned about reports of security problems "that appear to be similar, and that haven't been resolved."

"Considering the millions of dollars that we are spending on the Mainland, we would expect to get excellent service, excellent facilities, and ... I would expect that with their experience, they should be able to minimize any problems," he said of CCA.

LIFETIME CARE NEEDED

When the cell doors opened in Mississippi, prisoners attacked Lonoaea. His attackers tore or cut off his lips and broke bones in his face, said Honolulu lawyer Michael Green, who is suing CCA and the Hawai'i prison system on behalf of Lonoaea's family.

Green said Lonoaea, who is approaching the end of his prison sentence, will need intensive healthcare for the rest of his life that will likely cost $10 million to $11 million. The lawsuit alleges Hawai'i prison officials were negligent for failing to properly oversee the prison, and alleges CCA failed to properly train or supervise TCCF staff.

Inmates at Red Rock who were interviewed by The Advertiser complain that multiple cell doors there have repeatedly opened without warning at times when prisoners are supposed to be locked down, leaving protective custody inmates open to danger.

Officials at the privately owned Red Rock facility have disarmed the fuses in the electrical systems that operate the doors to some cells in the facility since the June 26 incident, and corrections officers at Red Rock have been manually opening the doors with keys, said McCoy of the Hawai'i Department of Public Safety.

In a written response to questions, McCoy confirmed inmate accounts of the attack in Echo-Delta pod, a housing unit where inmates are supposed to remain separated from each other at all times. After the doors opened, Kupa and a 44-year-old inmate allegedly attacked Sidney Tafokitau, 28. During the fight that followed, Tafokitau allegedly stabbed Kupa with a homemade knife.

Tafokitau said in a telephone interview this is the second time his cell door at Red Rock has opened without warning. Tafokitau said he acted in self-defense on June 26 and said he obtained the homemade knife by seizing it from one of his attackers during the fight.

Tafokitau also alleged that corrections officers initially fled from the fight instead of intervening to break it up and only returned later with pepper spray after Tafokitau's attackers had thrown him to the ground and were beating him.

"I telling you, this ... place is sloppy, cuz," said Tafokitau, who is serving a life sentence for robbery. "They make so much mistakes ... it's just a matter of time before another mistake. I telling you right now, somebody gonna get killed, brah."

Tafokitau said he was in the pod because he was involuntarily placed in protective custody after he clashed with a prison gang.

EARLIER INCIDENTS

Hawai'i inmates at Red Rock claim multiple cell doors have opened simultaneously and unexpectedly before.

Inmate Chris Wilmer, 29, recounted an incident on Feb. 2 when all of the doors in Echo-Delta unit again opened, releasing general population inmates into a dayroom occupied by protective custody inmates.

Wilmer, who also said he was involuntarily placed in protective custody because of conflicts with gang members, said he immediately became involved in a fight with two alleged members of a prison gang who were released into the dayroom.

Wilmer said a Hawai'i prison official was notified of that incident and spoke to Wilmer about it.

Wilmer said he also witnessed a similar incident where the doors opened in Echo-Bravo pod at about 6:30 p.m. on April 7, and Wilmer and another inmate both alleged there was another example of doors opening unexpectedly between June 21 and June 23 in the Echo-Bravo pod.

The growing sense of insecurity in the pods encourages inmates to try to obtain weapons, and Hawai'i needs to pressure CCA to fix the problem, said Wilmer, who is serving prison terms for robbery, attempted murder and other offenses.

"For here and now, something needs to be said and done," he said. "They don't have room for that kind of mistakes."

The officer who erred in the June 26 incident meant to open doors in another pod used by Alaska inmates and instead opened the doors to Hawai'i inmates' cells, McCoy said.

She said the officer has been disciplined. A female corrections officer who made a similar mistake by opening multiple doors in a living unit elsewhere in the prison earlier this year also was disciplined, McCoy said.

McCoy could not immediately confirm the other inmate reports of other cases where multiple cell doors opened unexpectedly in February, April and June.

RE-EVALUATING UNIT

Part of the problem on June 26 was that the pod involved was not designed to operate with "serious violent offenders" who are locked in their cells for 23 hours each day, but those kinds of offenders ended up there because they couldn't be held in Oklahoma or Mississippi, McCoy said.

Those inmates are now awaiting transfer to the newly opened Saguaro Correctional Center in Arizona, which has a segregation unit designed to house them, she said.

CCA responded to the June 26 incident by re-evaluating the staffing patterns for the unit that included the pod, and adding more experienced officers, McCoy said. The prison operator also had the door system manufacturer update the control panel software to add an extra safeguard to the system and is providing more intensive training for all staff assigned to the units, McCoy said.

Hawai'i was holding more than 600 inmates last month at Red Rock, which opened last year.

In all, the state houses more than 2,100 men and women convicts in CCA prisons on the Mainland because there is no room for them in prisons in Hawai'i.

Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com.