LORI NEWELL

BURGLARY, FORGERY

Otter Creek Correctional Center, Ky.

Newell, 44, who has three children and five grandchildren, was in the first group of Hawai'i women sent to Texas prisons in 1997. Her daughter was 11 at the time, and when Newell was released on parole three years later, she returned to find an angry, resentful teenager.

"The relationship is totally different," said Newell, who attributed her criminal troubles to crack cocaine use. "You cannot make up for all the time that you've lost and haven't seen each other."

A dispute with the girl two years later resulted in Newell's conviction for abuse of a family member. She denies the charge but was sent back to prison.

Newell frets about her release in February, and has asked to be returned to Hawai'i beforehand to enter a community program.

"Previously when I've been incarcerated, I had a boyfriend or somebody waiting for me," she said. "This time, I have nobody waiting for me. I'm in here doing my own time, taking care of myself. I'm starting over, basically, and I need a foundation. I'm asking them to please give me the opportunity."

Newell said she's seen other convicts who found themselves back on the street, alone and with no one to help.

"You know what happens? They go back out there and they resort to the same kind of lifestyle, and they're back in prison."

DARILYN AH LOY

FORGERY

Otter Creek Correctional Center, Ky.

Ah Loy, 26, spent the first 18 months of a five-year term at the Women's Community Correctional Center in Kailua before being transferred to the Mainland last year. She has no children, and said she would rather do her time on the Mainland.

Ah Loy compared the relaxed atmosphere at Brush Correctional Facility in Colorado to a college campus, but was critical of the programs offered there. "We get the dorms, but we don't get the classes," she said.

She needs a cognitive-skills course before she can be paroled, "but they don't have nothing here, nothing at all," she said. Still, Ah Loy enrolled in college courses to improve her job prospects when she's released. Last week, the women inmates from Hawai'i were transferred to Kentucky.

A Campbell High School graduate, Ah Loy said she began using LSD and cocaine when she was 15, and crystal methamphetamine by the time she was 19. She hopes to return to O'ahu after she's paroled and take care of her ailing mother. "I've messed up so much in my life already, I need to be there," she said. "I don't know what I would do if I'd lose her, being so far away from home."

ANTHONY BISCOE

SECOND-DEGREE MURDER

Diamondback Correctional Facility, Okla.

Biscoe, 31, is a former Schofield Barracks soldier from Maryland convicted of beating another man to death with a brick. He has very little contact with his ex-wife and three kids and has no family ties in Hawai'i, so the Mainland prisons look good to him.

After serving time in Texas, Arizona and Minnesota, Biscoe was returned to Halawa Correctional Facility for cancer treatment. He wanted to be moved back to the Mainland, and got his wish with a transfer to Oklahoma earlier this year.

"I think it's a lot easier to do your time over there," he said. "Halawa definitely is run a lot tighter. Movement is a lot more restrictive and controlled.

"In Arizona, you could have a musical instrument. I learned the piano."

Moving inmates to the Mainland also eases overcrowding at the Hawai'i prison, Biscoe said.

"It's better than having three to a cell, and that way the guys that are here have a better opportunity to get into the programs because the wait is a lot less," he said.

PISA TUVALE

FORGERY, THEFT, FRAUDULENT USE OF CREDIT CARDS

Otter Creek Correctional Center, Ky.

Tuvale said thoughts of her two sons, 12 and 15, are keeping her alive while she serves her 10-year sentence. The boys live with their father in Kalihi, and Tuvale desperately wants to go home.

"This is a different kind of punishment that we're going through," she said. "We're already punished by being in prison. Shipping us out is a whole new punishment. It's just like they took our hearts away."

When she was incarcerated in Hawai'i, Tuvale, 36, said she looked forward to weekend visiting days when she could hug her sons. Now, she can't afford to call home, and poor picture quality means she can barely see her boys when she gets a "video visit."

"I know that I done wrong in the community, and I thank God every day for making me come to jail, because if I didn't come to prison, I don't know what I would be right now," she said. "But all this time, I never dreamed they would ever ship me out of Hawai'i, away from my sons. I apologized to my boys for the crime that I done. I was on drugs.

"I never thought that Hawai'i would bring me to the Mainland and just leave me here," Tuvale said. "It's like they just fly you here and they cut you off after that."

PATRICIA SOARES

FIRST-DEGREE ASSAULT, DRUG OFFENSES

Otter Creek Correctional Center, Ky.

Soares, 41, had a cocaine habit that led her to the Hotel Street drug scene. In an argument over money and drugs, she stabbed another woman. "To this day, I can't even believe that I allowed myself to go there," she said.

Soares, who has an adult daughter, had been in and out of prison since 1992, and finally volunteered to go to Oklahoma in 2002 to do her time. She was later moved with other Hawai'i women to Colorado, and then to Kentucky last week.

"For me it was a good thing because it changed my life. I got back to the morals and values I had before I started doing drugs," she said. "It just makes you appreciate, I think, a lot of stuff that I took for granted for a long time."

In Colorado she taught hula to the other Hawai'i inmates, and she said she is a straight-A student halfway through her coursework toward a college degree. Soares attempted college twice, when she was on the outside, but said she quit because she was overwhelmed by juggling classes and work.

"I feel like I have a chance to work on myself right now," she said. "It's kind of sad that it took that to wake me up."

JEFFREY CHO

SEXUAL ASSAULT, PAROLE VIOLATION

As a minimum-custody inmate close to release, Cho was worried when he was stuck at the Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility in Tutwiler, Miss. He was first sent to prison in 1992, released, and then returned in 2002 after he failed a drug test.

Inmates who are close to release say they walk on eggshells when they are housed with prisoners serving long sentences. If a "lifer" lashes out in frustration and attacks an inmate who is about to be released, both prisoners could be punished, delaying release for the inmate whose sentence is almost up.

"I've been in here 13 years and I went through all the programs and stuff," said Cho, 46, before he was paroled in June. "I do have a problem with drugs, and one dirty (urinalysis) brought me back here for three years. Instead of putting me straight into an in-patient (drug-treatment) program, they shipped me here."

Cho completed a drug treatment program in Mississippi, and was returned to Hawai'i and set free.