KAILUA, O'ahu — Jackie Overturf calls herself a "phone mommy," with three children on the Big Island and almost seven years to go before she is eligible for parole.

Dressed in a blue prison uniform and white sneakers, she sits at a battered table in the library at the Women's Community Correctional Center in Kailua, recounting stories of her children that sound sweet and almost normal. She describes how, when she was held in a private prison in Colorado, her 5-year-old son would study a map while struggling to grasp the distance from Hawai'i.

When the state moved Overturf back to the Kailua prison earlier this year, the boy stared at a map of the Hawaiian Islands and exclaimed over the phone, "You're right next to me now!"

Tall and broad-shouldered, with thick black hair that reaches to the middle of her back, Overturf, 36, is articulate and plain-spoken. She is open about her deep addiction to crack cocaine and cries when she describes the physical damage she believes she did to one of her three sons by smoking crack while pregnant.

Yet, even after hundreds of hours of drug treatment inside prison and out, she admits she isn't certain she can stay sober forever.

'CRUEL AND UNUSUAL'

Overturf is a veteran of much that has gone wrong with the state's practice of housing prison inmates on the Mainland. She also is one of two Hawai'i inmates who allege they were sexually assaulted by a corrections officer in Colorado in January.

She contends it is unconstitutional "cruel and unusual punishment" to hold hundreds of Hawai'i prisoners on the Mainland, and has filed state and federal lawsuits challenging the transfers. She also has argued in her lawsuits that the state illegally deprived Hawai'i inmates on the Mainland of programs they are entitled to receive.

She has yet to win any of her lawsuits, but remains convinced the state is wrong, morally if not legally.

"Now I have a little passion. I want to fight for incarcerated women because it's really horrible the things that happen to us," she said.

Overturf grew up in Lanakila Homes in Hilo, one of the largest public-housing complexes on the Big Island. Her parents "did the best they could with what they had, and unfortunately I didn't turn out to be the best child," she said.

She graduated from Hilo High School in 1987 and signed up for the Navy, hoping to become a jet mechanic. But that ambition was crushed when she was seriously injured in a car wreck three days before she was scheduled to report for duty. Then, while staying with an aunt in the Los Angeles area, Overturf tried crystal methamphetamine for the first time.

When her aunt discovered Overturf was using drugs, she kicked her out, and Overturf returned to the Big Island. "When I came back to Hilo everybody was doing crack," Overturf said. "It was like a big party."

She moved in with her parents in Volcano and met "the man of my dreams" who would father her three children.

Overturf said the man was clean when she met him, working as a carpenter and installing vinyl siding. But he was later sentenced to prison for drugs and other offenses, and Overturf said she has not seen him in five years.

CAUGHT USING CRACK

She began her long relationship with state Child Welfare Services when she tested positive for crack after her first son was born. Overturf long ago surrendered parental rights to the boy, now 12, to a cousin who is raising him. Her middle son, 9, is in her sister-in-law's care, and Overturf's youngest son, 5, is being raised by her mother.

She said she carries a lot of guilt over her failures as a mother, and weeps when she talks about her middle child. The boy was born with extensive physical problems, some of which Overturf believes were caused by her cocaine use during pregnancy. The 9-year-old already has had several heart surgeries and is blind in one eye. The boy has twice undergone corneal transplants that failed. Doctors said he must wait until he is 16 before trying again.

"He's like the toughest kid, because he hears my voice crack over the phone and he says, 'Don't worry, Mom. They're going to fix it,' " Overturf said.

She writes to her oldest son, but he doesn't write back. Overturf shrugs; he's 12, after all.

"I'm the typical (Child Welfare Services) case: Lost my children, tried to get them back, tried to get them back, tried to stay off dope to get them back, but obviously that's not a big enough reason for some people to quit," she said, her voice beginning to break.

VICTIMS OF ABUSE

Lorraine Robinson, director of a program that helps ease women inmates back into civilian life, said about 12 percent of Hawai'i's prison population is female, roughly double the national average.

Robinson, who runs Ka Hale Ho'ala Hou No Na Wahine ("home of reawakening for women"), operated by the nonprofit TJ Mahoney & Associates, said she believes the state is locking up too many people who would be better served in community treatment programs.

That is particularly true of women inmates, who often come from backgrounds of abuse, neglect and poverty, she said.

"When you hear about the stories of these women and you hear about their childhoods, it's no wonder they end up in prison," she said.

Overturf admits using drugs and selling $20 worth of crack cocaine to an undercover officer in 1996, saying she had just become involved in small-time selling to feed her own addiction.

In 1997, she was sentenced to six months in jail, five years of probation and drug treatment. She did poorly on probation and was sent back to jail for another year in 1998. She was released to participate in a drug-treatment program, but was put back behind bars when she failed to enroll in a required program on Maui.

A Hilo judge resentenced Overturf to 10 years in prison, but she was quickly released again on parole. In 2000, while on parole, police accused her of selling $80 worth of cocaine and methamphetamine to an undercover officer. She pleaded no contest to the charges but now denies committing the crimes.

When Overturf tested positive for cocaine use, the Hawai'i Paroling Authority ordered that she return to prison to serve out the entire 10-year sentence for the 1996 cocaine sale. In 2001, she was given a five-year mandatory minimum sentence for the 2000 methamphetamine case, to run consecutively to the 10-year term.

'ANOTHER CHANCE'

Overturf will be eligible for parole on April 19, 2012, a lengthy punishment she contends does not fit her crimes of allegedly selling $100 worth of illegal drugs.

Assuming she is paroled in seven years, taxpayers will have spent an estimated $400,000 to $500,000 to imprison her in Hawai'i and on the Mainland. Overturf argues, with an obvious element of self-interest, that this is not cost-effective.

"Give me another chance," she said. "How many chances have we all been given? I mean, maybe not a drug addiction, but with gambling or any other kind of addiction? How many times have you tried to lose weight or stop smoking and kept trying until you finally decided, 'OK, I've finally had enough?' "

"I don't think there is a point that you should warehouse somebody," she said.

If she were returned to the streets today, "I think I might be ready to stay sober. I'm not going to say yes that I will stay sober because there's no guarantees. I know that when I'm stressed out I ... ," and her voice trails off.

"It's not the program, it's me. I know what I'm supposed to do," she said. "I still don't think I deserve 11 years. I don't know what to do with people like me."

Overturf pauses and then repeats: "I don't know what they should do with people like me."

MOVED TO OKLAHOMA

The state's answer was to transfer Overturf to a privately run prison in Oklahoma in April 2003 to free up space in the overcrowded women's prison in Kailua. A few weeks later, the state of Oklahoma bought the facility, renaming it the Mabel Bassett Correctional Center.

Hawai'i Department of Public Safety officials who inspected the prison became increasingly concerned that Oklahoma wasn't providing educational, drug treatment or other programs that were required by contract.

Inmates who had been midway through a yearlong course of drug treatment found themselves dropped from the program. Since inmates frequently are required to complete drug treatment before they can become eligible for parole, that meant the possibility of longer prison stays — and more expense to taxpayers.

Oklahoma had "absolutely no classes whatsoever for the Hawaiian inmates," Overturf said. "I was hoping to do something. I didn't care if I had to do drug treatment over and over, I want to occupy my time."

In August 2004 the state moved the Hawai'i women to Brush Correctional Facility in Colorado, run by GRW Corp., but new problems emerged. Inmates, including Overturf, ended up teaching the contractually required classes themselves, a violation of GRW's agreement with the state of Colorado.

Medical and dental care also were inadequate. In June, Colorado auditors reported the prison clinic at Brush was not licensed by the state, as required by law — a lapse that also violated the prison's contract with Hawai'i.

While at the Brush facility, Overturf worked as an inmate law clerk, helping other prisoners with grievances and legal research. It was in the prison law library the night of Jan. 8 when Overturf claims she and another inmate were sexually assaulted by a corrections officer.

LAWSUIT TO BE FILED

According to attorney Myles Breiner, who plans to file a lawsuit on behalf of the two women, the corrections officer pushed one of the inmates against a wall and threatened to write both up for misconduct if they did not perform a sex act for him. The women did as they were told, Breiner said, but one saved a semen sample that she later sent out of the prison as evidence.

GRW Corp. President Gil Walker said there are at least two other versions of events. According to what investigators were told, the three agreed to meet in the library for consensual sex. According to another version, the inmates had expected the officer to smuggle in contraband and when he failed to do so, they "set him up," Walker said.

Authorities also claim one or both of the inmates said they hoped to use the incident to get transferred back to Hawai'i and as the basis for a lawsuit.

Breiner denies the sexual contact was consensual and said the point is irrelevant, since it is a felony under Hawai'i and Colorado law for prison staff to engage in any sexual contact with a prisoner, consensual or not.

Colorado investigators concluded that eight inmates had sexual contact with prison staff at Brush, including the two Hawai'i women. They were unable to find evidence that staff forced any inmates to perform sex acts.

A former Brush corrections officer was charged with sexual conduct in a penal institution for the alleged sexual contact with the Hawai'i inmates, and another faced the same charge for an alleged incident involving a Wyoming inmate. The warden resigned from the prison in February and was later charged as an accomplice in one of the cases.

Criminal cases against all three men are still pending in Colorado. Overturf and the second Hawai'i inmate were returned to the women's prison in Hawai'i.

'SEVERE' PUNISHMENT

The GRW Corp. contract expired July 31, and Hawai'i officials last week moved the women inmates to Otter Creek Correctional Center in Wheelwright, Ky., operated by Corrections Corp. of America. CCA also runs prisons in Arizona, Oklahoma and Mississippi that house approximately 1,750 male prisoners from Hawai'i.

Back in Hawai'i, Overturf has pursued her legal campaign against the Mainland prison transfers with the help of an attorney.

In a brief she filed in Hilo Circuit Court last year, she quoted a 1983 opinion by late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, who wrote that a Hawai'i inmate sent to the Mainland "has in effect been banished from his home, a punishment historically considered to be 'among the severest ... ,' "

A convict sentenced to such isolation is enduring a punishment "far more drastic than that which normally accompanies imprisonment," the justice wrote.

But Marshall was writing a dissenting opinion for justices on the losing side of a case that upheld Hawai'i's authority to transfer inmates to the Mainland, and Overturf has lost her cases challenging the transfers.

She was back in a Hilo courtroom in May to try again, and as she waited for the proceedings to begin, Overturf had a chance to hold her youngest son.

The boy climbed up into her lap and surprised her with a Mother's Day gift of a flower pot fashioned from sticks and plastic flowers. It was the first time she had touched any of her children in three years.

As she stood in the paneled court waiting for the judge to enter, she looked over her shoulder at the child in the gallery, wiped her eyes and mouthed the words, "I love you."

Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com.