Slave Labor Used at Maui Prison

Nov. 15, 2012 - PRLog -- “Slave Labor at the Maui Prison”

Whistle-blower Retaliated Against By Supervisors of the Department of Public Safety at the Maui Community Correctional Center for Complaining of Inmates Being Used as Slave Labor by a Correctional Officer’s Private Landscaping Company

Honolulu, Hawaii- Civil rights law firm Fujiwara and Rosenbaum confirmed today that a whistle-blower retaliation complaint has been filed against the State of Hawaii’s Department of Public Safety and Individual Correctional Officers at the Maui Community Correctional Center [hereinafter referred to as “MCCC”].          

A native Hawaiian man, Hendricks Haupu, an twenty (20) year veteran Adult Correctional Officer at MCCC, has been overworked, reassigned and verbally and physically harassed as a result of him complaining to his direct supervisor, Sergeant Carl Duarte, at the MCCC. “A crew of inmates in the Community Workline Program was cleaning a section of land that was contracted to be landscaped by a private company. The inmate crew from the MCCC was landscaping, amongst other private areas, an area of land along a highway on Maui that is owned by the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands “DHHL”.

Background: Sergeant Duarte, had a landscaping business that had been awarded a contract by DHHL to landscape the area that the MCCC inmates landscaped. Hawaii’s inmates were performing private work for Sergeant Duarte’s private landscaping company and Sergeant Duarte collected the fees for said work from the DHHL. This, at the very least, is a clear violation of the Department of Public Safety’s Department Administration Policy and Procedures, Policy No.: Adm.03.01, Subject: Ethics Code, Gifts and Unwarranted Privileges and the State Code of Ethics, Hawaii Revised Statutes §§ 84-11 to 84-14.

Retaliation: 1)Mr. Haupu was physically and verbally harassed, 2)Mr. Haupu’s Community Workline crew was assigned the largest number of areas to landscape, 3) yet they were provided a limited amount of landscaping equipment, 4) no breaks and 5) little help from Sergeant Duarte or the two other Community Workline crews. Mr. Haupu began to be overworked shortly after making his complaint regarding Sergeant Duarte’s illegal activities. The overworking of Mr. Haupu and his crew made Mr. Haupu’s job very difficult and stressful. Mr. Haupu believes all of this is an attempt to force him to quit his job. This is retaliation for Mr. Haupu speaking up against the illegal conduct occurring at MCCC.