Opportunity Youth Action Hui (OYAH), a collaboration of organizations and individuals committed to reducing the harmful effects of a punitive incarceration system for youth and promoting Native Hawaiian equity in the justice system, is working to identify legislation that will prevent youth incarceration and improve the criminal justice system, write Leah Delos Santos and Lyla Gonsalves in an op-ed for Patch.com. Identifying more than one hundred bills in the Legislature that would benefit incarcerated youth, OYAH supported Senate Bill 2770, regarding Native Hawaiian rehabilitation programs for prison inmates that would require the Department of Public Safety to collaborate with the Office of Hawaiian Affairs for the creation of a program that will put an emphasis on Native Hawaiian values and cultural practices, write Santos and Gonsalves.
Another bill they support is Senate Bill 2115, which establishes time limits for minors placed under room confinement at a detention or shelter facility and is intended to reduce trauma from solitary confinement. According to a report by the American Civil Liberties Union, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders made up only 23 percent of adults in the state but a reported 47 percent of people incarcerated under Hawaii’s jurisdiction. Meanwhile, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs reports that Native Hawaiians are more likely to receive incarceration over probation, are more likely to get a prison sentence than all other groups, are sentenced to longer probation terms and prison sentences than most other racial or ethnic groups, and make up the highest percentage of people incarcerated in out-of-state facilities, says the Office of Hawaiian Affairs.