This brief report highlights justice reinvestment initiatives in Hawaii.
This brief report from the Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center highlights Hawaii's justice reinvestment efforts. These efforts are aimed at reducing the State's level of spending on corrections and reinvesting these savings in strategies that have been shown to increase public safety. The CSG Justice Center conducted a detailed analysis of Hawaii's reported crime and arrests, court dispositions and sentencing practices, probation and parole supervision, the parole review process, and jail and prison admission and release trends in order to develop a strategy aimed at helping the State address the challenges facing its criminal justice system. The report discusses 10 policy options organized around 3 priorities that emerged from the analyses. The three priorities are to increase efficiency, reduce recidivism, and ensure accountability. To accomplish these priorities, the report recommends reducing delay in pretrial processing, reducing obstacles to paying bail, reducing probation terms for people incarcerated for certain types of offenses, releasing low-risk individuals at the end of the minimum sentence; limiting the term of incarceration for first-time parole violations, allowing judicial discretion in sentencing second-time felony drug possession offenses raising the felony theft threshold; requiring the Hawaii Parole Authority to base programming requirements and release decisions on the results of an objective risk assessment; ensuring a minimum period of supervision for all people convicted of felony offenses leaving prison; and improving victim restitution collection and increase payments to victims. The report also discusses the outcomes that could result from implementation of the reinvestment strategy. Tables, figures, notes