On average, one in five visiting days at the medium security section of Halawa Correctional Facility has been canceled so far this year because there are too few corrections officers to oversee the visiting areas and process arriving visitors, prison officials said.

Cancellations of visits have long been a source of complaints by inmates and their families, and criminologists say the prison system should encourage family visits because family ties improve the inmates' odds of succeeding on parole after release.

However, Department of Public Safety Director Clayton Frank said the system's first obligation is to make sure all critical security posts in the prison are staffed on visiting days.

It takes about five extra officers to run visits, and "if we do not have additional staff to go around, then visits will be canceled," he said. "This is important and we're going to try our best to do it, but not to compromise the security of the facility."

The staff shortages on visiting days may be caused by corrections officers who take vacation, sick leave or compensatory time, he said.

Inmates at Halawa kept track of the number of times this year that prison officials canceled family visits, reporting that the cancellations occurred 15 times.

Public safety officials responded that, by their count, visits were canceled 13 times so far this year.

The cancellation of visits included New Year's Day and Super Bowl Sunday on Feb. 3.

Frank said prison policy is to encourage visits, but that the cancellations were generally necessary and acceptable except in June, when the prison canceled four out of nine scheduled visiting days.

Frank said that happened because many corrections officers were allowed time off that month to attend June graduations or to coach youth teams at athletic events.

"In the future, we want to ensure that visits do occur, and when we see a pattern of consecutive Sundays happening, we want to make sure that those things don't happen again," Frank said.

64 ALLOWABLE DAYS

Visitation at Halawa is generally allowed on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays. As of mid-July, 13 of approximately 64 allowable visitation days this year had been canceled.

The prisoners who tracked the cancellations asked that they not be identified for fear that they would be punished for speaking out.

Similar inmate complaints have surfaced at other prisons and jails over the years, including Kulani Correctional Facility and Hawaii Community Correctional Center in Hilo.

One inmate complained the cancellations meant he had not seen his family in months, and prisoners also expressed frustration that the prison did not have a system for warning families when visits were canceled, such as a telephone recording the families could call before they drive to Halawa.

Frank said most of the complaints about visits at Halawa were from people who traveled long distances or by bus to the prison only to find out visits had been canceled. The complaints were not so much that the visits themselves were canceled, but rather that there was no advance notification system to warn families when the visits were called off, he said.

Louise Kim McCoy, spokeswoman for the Department of Public Safety, said in an e-mail response to questions that the prison planned to implement a "Halawa Inmate Visitation Hotline," which would provide a number families can call for a prerecorded message advising them whether visits have been canceled.

McCoy said Halawa warden Francis Sequeira told the inmates about the new system on July 18.

CAUSE FOR CONCERN

Criminologists at the University of Hawai'i said the cancellations of visits are cause for concern.

Marilyn Brown, a criminologist at UH-Hilo, said it is widely accepted among researchers in the field that maintaining family ties helps inmates to succeed on parole after they are finally released from prison.

The objective is to maintain the "pro-social" community ties of the inmates, said Meda Chesney-Lind, criminologist with UH-Manoa. Strong family ties mean the prisoners have financial support when they finally get out, and also have people they care about who are offering encouragement and emotional support.

"If that relationship has fallen apart or has fallen on hard times because you can't visit each other and can't see each other, obviously that's a harm, and it's a harm we're all going to pay a price for," Chesney-Lind said.

"For males, these are some of the few pro-social bonds that they have in their lives. Most of their peer networks are the things that get them in trouble, so especially for male inmates, this visitation is absolutely crucial.

"They will be coming back to our communities. Everybody thinks when they go to prison they sort of disappear off the face of the earth. They don't. These folks come back, and they either come back damaged, or they come back with the kind of attributes that will enable them to succeed on parole."

Brown suggested that family visits also help with the orderly operation of a prison because it gives inmates something to look forward to. She said the visits at Halawa are probably particularly important to inmates who may be transferred to a prison on the Mainland at any time.

Hawai'i holds more than half of its prison population on the Mainland in privately run prisons in Arizona and Kentucky, and visits at the Mainland prisons are very rare because few inmate families can afford the travel.

Both Chesney-Lind and Brown said the canceled visitations remind them of reports they heard over the years of classes and other prison programs being canceled because of short-staffing.

Chesney-Lind recalled arriving at the gates of OCCC to teach a class in the mid-1980s and being told the class was canceled because of staff shortages.

The continuing pattern "reflects on the chronic understaffing of our institutions," she said. "We want to lock people up, but we don't want to pay the price."

However, Frank said the cancellations of visits does not necessarily imply the prison is short-staffed.

"I cannot predict whether a situation may come up that visits cannot occur," he said.