An inmate death at Halawa Correctional Facility early Thursday morning is believed to be the fifth suicide in the Hawaii correctional system this year, and the third suicide at Halawa in the past six months.

The prisoner was identified as Justin Feliciano, 33, and the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said in a written statement Friday he was discovered unresponsive in his cell at about 2:15 a.m.

Prison staff administered life-saving procedures and called for help, but personnel with Emergency Medical Services and the Honolulu Fire Department were unable to revive Feliciano.

An autopsy will be performed to determine the exact cause of death, but the case is believed to be a suicide, said Christin Johnson, oversight coordinator with the Hawaii Correctional System Oversight Commission.

Data compiled by Civil Beat shows the Hawaii correctional system had at least 13 known or suspected suicides from 2020 to 2024. That compares with only six suicides in Hawaii prisons and jails from 2015 to 2019, according to data compiled by the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Feliciano was serving time for robbery, theft, assault, habitual property crime, collisions involving substantial bodily injury, promoting prison contraband, and terroristic threatening.

Another death at Halawa on Nov. 20 is also believed to be a suicide, and an autopsy by the Honolulu Medical Examiner confirmed a third prisoner who died there on June 18 also committed suicide by hanging. Halawa is the state’s largest prison, and currently holds 721 male prisoners.

Carrie Ann Shirota, policy director for the ACLU of Hawaii, said the recent uptick in suicides “is very alarming to us. It really shows the state’s absolute failure to divert people with mental health conditions that were pre-existing in our jails and prisons, and getting them the services they need in the community.”

“There needs to be an assessment of what could have been done to either prevent or mitigate these circumstances that led to this person’s death by suicide,” she said.

ACLU of Hawaii wants an independent review of the deaths by suicide in the state’s jails and prisons, Shirota said, and will urge the Hawaii Correctional System Oversight Commission to include suicides as a standing item on the commission’s monthly agendas.

Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Director Tommy Johnson declined to comment on the most recent death at Halawa, but Johnson has said suicides in custody are a growing problem across the country because many mentally ill people are being sent to prisons and jails who don’t belong there.

Correctional facilities have become “de facto mental health institutions because across the country a lot of those facilities have closed down,” Johnson said.

A study by the U.S. Bureau of Justice statistics three years ago found that from 2001 to 2019, the number of suicides increased 85% in state prisons, and 13% in local jails. The Hawaii state correctional system operates both prisons and jails.

The state Department of Law Enforcement and the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation are investigating the most recent death, according to the statement from corrections officials.