After decades of quietly shipping incarcerated Hawaiians to the mainland, lawmakers in Honolulu are now pushing to reverse course and bring hundreds of them back home. A new proposal, HB 1769, would force the state to start phasing out its reliance on private, out-of-state prisons beginning in 2029, putting one of Hawaii's most divisive corrections practices squarely on the clock.
The House approved the bill in a 50-1 vote on March 10, and the full Senate later advanced it with unanimous support, according to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. Backed by a coalition of lawmakers from multiple islands, the measure moved through a round of Senate amendments and is now headed back to the House for more work.
Under HB 1769, the director of the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation would be required to return committed felons who are currently housed in private, out-of-state facilities to prisons in Hawaii. The bill sets a 25 percent reduction target by July 1, 2029, with additional phased returns in subsequent years. The bill's language and its amended drafts are posted on LegiScan.
How Many Would Come Home
Testimony to a House committee put the scale of the problem in blunt terms. About 800 Hawaii men are held at Saguaro Correctional Center in Eloy, Arizona. Back home, Halawa Correctional Facility, the state's only medium-security men's prison, has far less available space than the number of people who would need to be returned.
Department officials told lawmakers that Halawa's design capacity is significantly below the current population of medium-custody inmates the state would have to absorb, and that DCR does not control how many people the courts send into its custody. Those remarks are captured in the committee hearing transcript available through Civil Beat/Digital Democracy.
Costs and Capacity
DCR warned legislators that bringing people back without adding beds could tip the system into dangerous overcrowding and potentially invite federal scrutiny. The department estimated that a new medium-security prison could cost roughly 800 million to 900 million dollars to build, plus 45 million to 55 million dollars a year to operate.
Advocates counter that there are real fiscal and human costs to continuing the mainland contracts. Hawaiʻi Public Radio reports that Hawaii's per-diem payment for Saguaro is far lower than in-state costs, which helps explain why officials keep pointing to both budget and bed-space tradeoffs. Those tradeoffs, and the question of who pays for new bricks and mortar, dominated floor debate and committee hearings this spring.
Supporters' Case
Supporters of HB 1769 say the financial calculus is only part of the story. They argue that returning people to the islands would reconnect them with family and culture and ultimately improve reentry outcomes, especially for Native Hawaiian men who have been incarcerated on the mainland for years.
Organizers who visited Saguaro told reporters that many of the men there "feel that they were put out and just forgotten," a sentiment that backers say the bill is designed to confront, as reported by Hawaiʻi Public Radio. That kind of testimony has helped drive a growing wave of public pressure behind HB 1769.
Pushback And Next Steps
The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has continued to push back on any phase-in that is not tied to specific plans for beds, staffing, and programming. The bill cleared multiple Senate committees and picked up amendments along the way. Committee records and roll calls are posted on LegiScan, and reporting notes that several senators, including Brandon Elefante and Sharon Moriwaki, voiced concerns about how quickly the returns would have to happen.
Lawmakers now have to hammer out a final version that reconciles the amended timelines with the department's operational warnings before HB 1769 can reach the governor's desk.
Legal and Operational Risks
DCR witnesses repeatedly cautioned that a rapid influx of people from Arizona, without new capacity, could spark overcrowding severe enough to trigger federal intervention. The department is piloting a reclassification review that could shift custody levels for some individuals, which might free up certain types of beds.
Still, officials told legislators that any serious plan to bring large numbers of people home will require more than reshuffling paperwork. They warned that new housing, staffing, and rehabilitative programming are essential if the state wants to avoid trading one set of problems for another. Their testimony and the full hearing transcript are publicly available through Civil Beat/Digital Democracy.
