Hawaii Prisons

The Saguaro C.C. authorities that work under “CoreCivic” get away with beating down the Hawaiian prisoners illegally. When they are “handcuffed,” “belly-chained,” and “leg shackled,” while the authorities are doing the video recording, they like to move the camera when they are doing the illegal beat down, and when the prisoners start to defend themselves, the authorities cry and press charges against the prisoners, so the authorities continue to violate the prisoners “right” to be “free” from cruel and unusual punishment. Why? It is because these authorities say, if we can get rid of the Idaho state prisoners, because they have RULES, so it’s harder to make money off them, than it is with the Hawaii state prisoners, because they have no rules, so it’s easy making money off the Hawaiians, so that shows that the CoreCivic members that are running this private prison show their true colors upon retaliation as well as RACISM. And for the STATE OF HAWAII, they really need to start recognizing and HELP their people before it’s too late.

These authorities that will be stated below continue to show their unprofessionalism for their position:

WARDEN – Sean Wead

ASSISTANT WARDEN – Jody Bradley

CHIEF OF SECURITY – S. Russell

ASSISTANT CHIEF OF SECURITY – N. Samberg

HAWAII CONTRACT MONITOR – Jennifer Bechler

This shows that no matter how hard the prisoners seek for help they just get nowhere!

CoreCivic has this property officer named J. FERNINO and it’s hard to follow the rules within the prison, because this lady has stolen the prisoners’ personal property and was suspended for SIX MONTHS, so after that, they let her come back and she keeps on doing the same thing and on top of that, CoreCivic’s other staff members help the property officer by siding with her when the prisoners are writing her up for having SEX with a prisoner and she only baby him, so she don’t get fired.

This private prison is working together so tightly, that when they violate CoreCivic policies, they back date all the Disciplinary Reports (D.R.) and say that it is a “clerical error” when we all know that is NOT true, and “15-2” is the D.R.’s policy and procedures, so if anybody can see that these AUTHORITIES can’t handle running this PRIVATE PRISON OF SAGUARO CORRECTIONAL CENTER then they NEED to get FIRED!

STATE OF HAWAII, PLEASE HELP YOUR HAWAIIN PRISONERS from being DEGRADED in the STATE OF ARIZONA and letting these authorities run over us, because we as prisoners are HUMANS (AND NOT TRASH)!

The DISRESPECT against our Hawaiians and our “ALOHA” that we show, and all of this NEEDS to STOP!

Saguaro Correctional Center in Eloy, Arizona as a private prison is being run illegally by these authorities: WARDEN - Sean Wead, Assistant WARDEN - Jody Bradley, HAWAII CONTRACT MONITOR - Jennifer Bechler and others.

Here, disciplinary segregation is run against CoreCivic policy and by law from the above, because they are segregating only the Hawai’i prisoners for over one (1) year in a segregated unit. And no matter how you look at it, there is no way out, not even if you take them to court, because the courts here in Arizona for SCC all work together to just get free money off the Hawai’ian prisoners when we file a lawsuit.

Help Our Hawai’ian Population

They have this thing that they call SHIP. No policies pursuant to any law authorizes SHIP. SHIP is identified as Special Housing Incentive Program.

CoreCivic does not provide “intensive program” within SHIP:

• Does not provide substance abuse treatment
• Does not provide education
• Does not provide comprehensive programs
• Does not provide vocational opportunities to prepare prisoners for a successful re-entry into society or the general population

SHIP does not support academic development through Adult Basic Education (ABE) or General Equivalency Diploma (GED). Therefore SHIP lacks any penological goal or correctional interest.

Why does Hawai’i support SHIP when it does not help our Hawai’ian population? Our people deserve better. SHIP is fraud. CoreCivic is degrading our Hawai’ian people.

Halawa Correctional Facility (the state prison in Honolulu, Hawaii) does not recognize SHIP, so how does CoreCivic get away with it here?

The First Amendment authorizes anyone to grieve the government. Due Process requires at the minimum some type of hearing to be held. The Eighth Amendment, which is “cruel and unusual punishment” as well as “retaliation” is heavy in this private prison of Saguaro Correctional Center. And these authorities just get away with it. It is wrong for the law to do that to innocent prisoners that are only trying to go home to their family and learn from the mistakes that led them to prison.

MIM(Prisons) adds:In 1995, 300 Hawai’ian prisoners were shipped from occupied Hawai’i to the occupied Sonoran Desert, where CoreCivic (at the time the Corrections Corporation of America) runs the Saguaro Correctional Center. This was billed as a “temporary measure” to deal with extreme overcrowding in prisons on the Hawaiian islands. But it was not temporary. Today there are about 1000 Hawaiians there, and at the peak there were about 1,500.

Just over a year ago, Hawaii News Now got rare video access to Saguaro CC for an apparent fluff piece to appease growing concerns among Hawai’ians for the people being shipped there. The story praises the program for giving access to cleaner, less crowded prisons where there are more programs for rehabilitation preparing people for their release back to Hawai’i.(1) According to the author above, it seems everything took a sharp change after Hawaii News Now left, or someone was lying.

While only 10% of the population of the state of Hawai’i today, Native Hawai’ians and Pacific Islanders make up 44% of the prison population.(2) In 2010, Pacific Islanders were 1.5% of the prison population in Arizona, despite being 0.2% of the state population. This is due primarily to the shipping of Hawaii’s prisoners to Saguaro CC.

Hawai’i is one of the internal semi-colonies of the United $tates. We report regularly on the disproportionate targeting of the internal semi-colonies for imprisonment, and once in prison, for isolation. So it is no surprise that Hawai’ians are facing similar repression by Amerikans. We support this comrade’s call, and hope we can play a role in the campaign to bring Hawaiian prisoners home.

<sup>Notes:
1. Lynn Kawano, 15 December 2022, These prisoners have access to better facilities. The price? They’re 3,000 miles from home, Hawaii News Now.
2. Prison Policy Initiative profile on Hawaii, using data from 2021.</sup>