Since you seem to lack any ideas, here's a procedural change I can think of that needs to be made at all the prisons: stop putting the folks in for fraud and drug-related crime in cells and yards with the real bad guys (murderers, gang members, etc.). How about increasing staffing and surveillance, too? We just pack people into these prisons to warehouse them now, putting two and three into cells designed for one, and stuffing hundreds into huge gyms converted into dorm rooms, too. There can't possibly be adequate supervision or protection for those guys. They just keep getting killed that way.
Better yet, if you care enough about their lives to kill the people who end them, then maybe you should find something else to do with your non-violent offenders than send them off to an expensive prison with the worst-of-the-worst thousands of miles from home. These prisoners families should be marching in the streets demanding that the rest be brought back home. Putting them on a tether and enrolling them in school would be cheaper and more effective towards rehabilitating them than what you're doing now.
Of course, Arizona won't even make sure our youth can succeed in school before they get criminalized, so I don't think we're about to entertain that one here. We're pretty invested in keeping a certain portion of our population uneducated enough to fill those low-wage jobs we just chased all our migrants out of...
Third Hawaii inmate faces death penalty in Arizona
By Gregg K. Kakesako
POSTED: 01:30 a.m. HST, Sep 04, 2010
Honolulu Star Observer
A third Hawaii inmate serving time in an Arizona prison faces the death penalty after allegedly killing a fellow inmate during an argument in June.
Mahina Uli Silva, 21, was indicted by a Pinal County grand jury yesterday for allegedly strangling his cellmate from Hawaii, Clifford Medina, 23, on June 8. Medina was found unresponsive in the cell he shared with Silva at Saguarao Correctional Center in Eloy, Ariz.
Clayton Frank, director of the state Department of Public Safety, said his office was informed of the indictment yesterday.
Frank said Silva was sent to prison in 2006 after being convicted for burglary, theft and robbery. He is eligible for parole in October 2011.
Silva is the third inmate from Hawaii facing capital crime charges.
The other two are Miti Maugaotega Jr., 24, who is serving a life sentence for first-degree attempted murder for the June 2003 shooting of Punchbowl resident Eric Kawamoto; and Micah Kanahele, 29, who is serving two 20-year sentences for the October 2003 shooting deaths of Greg Morishima at his Aiea home and Guylan Nuuhiwa in a Pearl City parking lot a week later.
Maugaotega and Kanahele were indicted earlier this year for the stabbing death of fellow inmate Bronson Nunuha, 26, who died Feb. 18.
Frank said the two are expected to stand trial in Arizona this month.
The three are the first to face capital punishment for a crime committed in a private prison on the mainland since Hawaii started housing inmates out of state in 1995.
Hawaii, which abolished capital punishment in 1957, is one of 11 states and the District of Columbia that do not have the death penalty.
Maugaotega, Kanahele and Silva are among the 1,871 male Hawaii inmates at Saguaro, a 1,897-bed prison owned by Corrections Corp. of America.
Frank said an internal investigation into Medina's death by his staff hasn't turned up any major problems or procedures that need to be changed at the private prison.
He said that Medina and Silva are both from the Pahoa area on the Big Island.
"There is no indication of bad blood between the two," Frank said.
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