H  HAWAII TO REMOVE INMATES OVER SEX ABUSE CHARGES 

S1  Hawaii prison officials said Tuesday that all of the state's 168 female inmates at a privately run Kentucky prison will be removed by the end of September because of charges of sexual abuse by guards.
S2 Forty inmates were returned to Hawaii on Aug. 17.

S3  This month, officials from the Hawaii Department of Public Safety traveled to Kentucky to investigate accusations that inmates at the prison, the Otter Creek Correctional Center in Wheelwright, including seven from Hawaii, had been sexually assaulted by the prison staff.

S4  Otter Creek is run by the Corrections Corporation of America and is one of a spate of private, for-profit prisons, mainly in the South, that have been the focus of investigations over issues like abusive conditions and wrongful deaths.
S5 Because eastern Kentucky is one of the poorest rural regions in the country, the prison was welcomed by local residents desperate for jobs.

S6  Hawaii sent inmates to Kentucky to save money.
S7 Housing an inmate at the Women's Community Correctional Center in Kailua, Hawaii, costs $86 a day, compared with $58.46 a day at the Kentucky prison, not including air travel.

S8  Hawaii investigators found that at least five corrections officials at the prison, including a chaplain, had been charged with having sex with inmates in the last three years, and four were convicted.
S9 Three rape cases involving guards and Hawaii inmates were recently turned over to law enforcement authorities.
S10 The Kentucky State Police said another sexual assault case would go to a grand jury soon.

S11  Kentucky is one of only three states -- the others are Iowa and Maryland -- where it is a misdemeanor rather than a felony for a prison guard to have sex with an inmate, according to the National Institute of Corrections, a policy arm of the Justice Department.
S12 A bill to increase the penalties for such sexual misconduct failed to pass in the Kentucky legislature this year.

S13  The private prison industry has generated extensive controversy, with critics arguing that incarceration should not be contracted to for-profit companies.
S14 Several reports have found contract violations at private prisons, safety and security concerns, questionable cost savings and higher rates of inmate recidivism.
S15 "Privately operated prisons appear to have systemic problems in maintaining secure facilities," a 2001 study by the Federal Bureau of Prisons concluded.

S16  Proponents say privately run prisons provide needed beds at lower cost.
S17 About 8 percent of state and federal inmates are held in such prisons, according to the Justice Department.

