Hawaii Holds State Forum on Public Safety

At the forum, a CSG Justice Center staff member conducted a presentation for the House Concurrent Resolution 85 Task Force that focused on high-level criminal justice challenges in Hawaii, including

• Overcrowded in-state prisons that necessitate housing people in mainland prisons;
• An increase in the violent crime rate, due largely to an uptick in aggravated assaults;
• Higher recidivism rates for people released from prison without subsequent community supervision compared to those on probation or parole; and
• The need to expand access to community-based behavioral health treatment and services for people in the criminal justice system.

A question-and-answer period that followed the presentation highlighted the task force’s—and the public’s—inability to access timely criminal justice system data and the desire to conduct a third-party analysis of the available data so that it can be distilled into actionable policies.

Following the 50-State Summit on Public Safety in November 2017, the U.S Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance selected multiple states to host individual state forums on public safety. Vermont and Ohio were the first to host theirs in April, followed by Michigan, Oregon, and Wyoming; and New Mexico, Iowa, and Connecticut.