Sustainable Waste Management for Hawaii’s Correctional Facilities: Barriers to Implementation

Abstract

As correctional facilities seek to address overcrowding, increased expenses, and a 50% national recidivism rate, many facilities are looking towards creative measures in sustainability programs such as waste management (Benecchi, 2021). In order to implement successful waste management programs, the barriers to implementation must first be addressed. These barriers were discovered through a waste audit conducted on 8 of Hawaii’s correctional facilities due to the lack of national correctional facility data on waste composition and operations. The correctional facilities under this study include: Hawaii Community Correctional Center (HCCC), Kulani Correctional Facility (KCF), Kauai Community Correctional Center (KCCC), Maui Community Correctional Center (MCCC), Oahu Community Correctional Center (OCCC), Halawa Correctional Facility (HCF), Waiawa Correctional Facility (WCF), and Women’s Community Correctional Center (WCCC). The completion of the waste audit provided data for the overall waste operations, waste composition make-up for each site, potential areas to implement waste management programs and barriers to implementation of the waste management programs. Through the study and waste audit, the following barriers to implementation of a more sustainable waste management program were found: the need to determine site specific waste composition make-up to act as a benchmark or standard for each site, cost of equipment or budget constraints, understaffing of adult correctional officers (ACO), and ease of implementation. The data gathered from the waste audit, environmental assessment previously completed for each site, as well as research on successful programs with waste management programs implemented provided methods to potentially eliminate or mitigate the barriers to implementation. These include leadership support, policy changes, scorecard matric, training and education, and cost savings and revenue. The greatest limitation to this study is the COVID-19 Pandemic that caused an increase in certain wastes produced as well as an inaccurate depiction of inmate populations as many inmates were released prematurely to deal with the overcrowding and rapid spread of the disease.