Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 21, Number 3, 1 Malaki 2004 — Inmate banishment [ARTICLE]

Inmate banishment

I am a female of Hawaiian ancestry and a resident of Hawai'i serving prison time in an Oklahoma prison. It is my eoneem as to why the Department of Public Safety (DPS) has not taken a more diligent approach to housing the Hawai'i inmates. To date, the DPS officials have made visits to this facility and we (Hawai'i female inmates) have eonveyed our issues to them as mueh as possible without infuriating the powers that are in Oklahoma. However, our issues have not been resolved as it stands (i.e., proper winter attire, underwear, absolutely no drug programming for only Hawai'i inmates). Now, we are being housed under the authority of another state entity and its state laws. Our constitutional rights, interests and contractual agreement have been abandoned by the state DPS. As justices Marshall, Brennan and Stevens pointedly observed in Olim v. Wakinekonei, 461 U.S. 253, 103 S. Ct 1741 (1983), a person convicted in Hawai'i then transferred to a mainland prison "has in effect been banished from his home, a punishment historically considered being

among the severest. Whether it is called banishment, exile, deportation, relegation, or transportation, compelling a person to quit a city, or plaee, or county for a specific period of time, or life, has long been considered a unique and severe deprivation and was specifically outlawed by the 12th section of the English habeas corpus act, 31 Car.II, one of the three great muniments of English Liberty." However, here I sit, 3,000 miles away from Hawai'i - the only plaee I will ever eall home. Ku'u home 'o Hawai'i. Jacqueline Aloha Overturf McLoud, Oklahoma