Kids in Prison : Hawaii Reforms its System : Girls No Longer in Detention; Numbers of Boys Down Sharply : Honolulu City Beat / Washington Post / Tom McDermott

There are zero incarcerated girls in Hawai’i. For the 1st time in the history of the Hawai’i Youth Correctional Facility, it is empty of girls. This is no fluke or accident. HYCF has been empty for weeks after years of work to replace handcuffs with healing. - Tweet by Hawai'i State Commission on the Status of Women

For many years now Native Hawaiians, including, Native Hawaiian girls, have been over-represented in Hawaii's jails and juvenile detention facilities.  Among the juveniles many were children who repeatedly ran away from home, often due to sexual or physical abuse.  Several years ago Hawaii set about a comprehensive review of its juvenile justice system and those efforts have now begun to pay off.  

Reform of juvenile justice systems has been a longstanding concern of mine.  My mother lived in Hawaii for many of the years that I worked outside the US, and as a result, my home leave point was Honolulu. Ever since I have kept one eye on developments there.  So I was doubly pleased recently to come across a 'good news' story about juvenile justice reform in Hawaii.

   

The last girl held in Hawaii's juvenile detention system two weeks ago.  Hawaiian authorities plan to keep that number at zero.  As the Administrator of the Hawaiian 'youth correctional center' said, “What I’m trying to do is end the punitive model that we have so long used for our kids, and we replace it with a therapeutic model,” he added. “Do we really have to put a child in prison because she ran away? What kind of other environment is more conducive for her to heal and be successful in the community?”

The head of the Initiative to End Girls'  Incarceration, points out that "Gender-focused programming is essential, .... because of 'the criminalization of sexual abuse. This legacy, she said, reaches back to colonization and slavery in the United States and has resulted in the disproportionately high incarceration rates of Black and Indigenous women and girls."

The numbers of boys held in detention is also sharply down - from over 500 to only 16 at present.  The reduced numbers reflect a national trend towards keeping children out of juvenile detention.  Nation-wide over 1,000 juvenile detention facilities have closed since 2000, and the numbers in detention have dropped by more than half.

Youth work on a farm at the Kawailoa Youth and Family Wellness Center, which serves as an alternative to the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility and is located on the facility’s grounds. 

Hawaii's reforms owe their beginnings to a retired family court judge, Karen Radius, who established one of the country's first 'Girls Courts' - courts designed to look behind criminal charges into the specific issues of trauma and abuse faced by girls.  

Given the disproportionate numbers of Native Hawaiians in detention, Hawaii's efforts have focused on the community and on efforts to support the return of children through trauma care and reintegration to community life.  Not an easy goal to achieve, given the breakup of traditional families and community structures, but through innovative work by several Hawaiian NGOs, the state seems to be making good progress.  

This has important implications for other areas of the Americas where indigenous populations have been heavily impacted by 'justice systems' weighted against them.  This is especially true for girls of native communities who so often have ended up victims of sexual abuse and trafficking.

As the New York Congress woman Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez tweeted on seeing the reports, "Wow. Another world is possible".

Click to read "The Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility Has No Girls. Can It Do The Same For Boys?" (Honolulu City Beat)

Click here to read the article in the Washington Post