Traditionally, Hawaii’s courts used a broad brush in handling teens who got in trouble with the law.

“Before, we would basically treat kids like little adults,” said William Maemori, supervising probation officer at Family Court. “We would say, ‘You’ve got to follow the rules,’ and when they didn’t we’d lock them up.

“Our detention numbers used to be ridiculous — we would have hundreds of youth in detention,” added Maemori, who has been at the probation office for eight years. “With juvenile justice reform, we’re changing lenses, and we’re very targeted in what we do and how we do it.”

Many of Hawaii’s youthful offenders are avoiding lockup these days as judges and probation officers have begun carefully assessing the individual circumstances of each youth, the risk to the public he or she might pose, and how best to handle the situation.

The number of teens sent to the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility plunged from 171 in 2010 to 43 in the fiscal year that ended in June, according to the Juvenile Justice Information System. Admissions to the Juvenile Detention Facility at Kapolei, for minors needing short-term secure custody, also fell, to 567 from 1,072 over the same period.

Despite fears that letting delinquent kids remain in the community would be dangerous, reform advocates point out that there has been no increase in juvenile crime as a result.

“Our juvenile justice reforms have gone very well and significantly reduced the population both at our Detention Home for pretrial detainees and the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility,” said 1st Circuit Chief Judge R. Mark Browning, a leader in the reform effort.

“The important statistic that people always are concerned about is, has it jeopardized the safety of the public?” he said. “Our statistics show that public safety has been enhanced.”

The number of juvenile felony cases, an indicator of the youth crime rate, is just a third of what it was seven years ago. In the 2017 fiscal year, there were 412 felony petitions filed in Family Court, down from 1,286 in 2010.

Teens often start their path into the court system as runaways or truants. National research shows that intervening early and giving them the support they need is more effective than incarcerating them, which tends to harden them into adult criminals.

In Hawaii, 3 out of 4 youths released from HYCF were “re-adjudicated as delinquent” or convicted as adults of new crimes within three years, according to a 2010 analysis by the state.

The state started shifting its approach to youth offenders in 2009 after joining the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative spearheaded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation of Baltimore. The initiative called for using objective criteria and risk assessment rather than gut feelings in determining how to handle rebellious or delinquent youth. The goal was to offer alternatives to lockup that are more effective.

Since then the Judiciary and other involved parties have worked together to reduce unnecessary detention and improve services for youth. In 2010 Hawaii’s Family Court stopped detaining teens solely for “status offenses,” such as running away and truancy, which at the time accounted for more than half the caseload.

Act 201 passes

In 2014 legislators passed and Gov. Neil Abercrombie signed Act 201, which codified the juvenile justice reforms into law, aiming to reduce the incarcerated population, ensure each youth had a re-entry plan and strengthen probation practices to help teens stay out of trouble in the first place. The law prohibited placement of youth with misdemeanor offenses at HYCF. Slots there were to be reserved for more serious offenders.

The approach is making a big difference to the typical teen who has a brush with the law, who might otherwise have been pushed into the criminal justice system.

“The more we bring them to court, the more they get put into a category of being a criminal, and then they portray that behavior,” Maemori said.

The new law required use of a validated assessment tool to gauge the risk and needs of each youth and the creation of an individualized case plan. The Youth Assessment and Screening Instrument, known as YASI, also looks at the child’s strengths and protective factors, such as family attachments.

Alternatives to lockup

And now there is a menu of options other than lockup.

“Youth that are low-risk, we either refer them out to a diversion program or we put them on administrative monitoring,” said Sandie Kato, administrator for juvenile intake and probation services at Family Court.

“They have to meet a set of conditions within a short period of time. It may be doing community service, writing a letter of apology or something to that effect. If they comply, we send them on their merry way, which is what the research tells us we should be doing with these low-risk individuals.”

For moderate- to high-risk youths, her staff focuses on attitudes and behaviors, rather than just monitoring their compliance with requirements. They meet with youths regularly and assess how each child is faring and adjust accordingly.

“If I had a youth who was referred to us for fighting, I think in the past we would see whether they were going to their anger management program. But now that’s not enough. We say, ‘Tell me what you’ve learned. Did you get angry in this past week? How did you handle it?’”

Positive reinforcement

Along with sanctions, the new approach offers incentives, including the possibility of earning early discharge for good behavior. That is a sea change from traditional probation practices, Kato said.

“What we didn’t do in the past was recognize kids when they did well,” Kato said. “But boy, when they messed up, we were all over them.

“My folks are really good about the ‘attaboys’ and ‘attagirls’ now, recognizing we are not looking for perfection, we are looking for improvement,” she said.

Although it is still early, the first results are positive, both for the youths and their families as well as for the community.

“I think there was real fear initially that if we weren’t heavy-handed, that crime would run rampant,” Kato said. “And that just hasn’t been the case.”

Maemori maintains the new approach and support services go a long way in tempering misbehavior and warding off problems.

“If these kids had that kind of positive reinforcement earlier in their life,” he said, “they probably wouldn’t be involved in the criminal justice system in the first place.”