Posted on: Thursday, June 17, 2004
Juvenile justice experts meet here to initiate change
By Peter Boylan
Advertiser Staff Writer
A team of national experts will hold a series of meetings with state officials today and tomorrow aimed at reforming practices and improving conditions at the Hawai'i Youth Correctional Facility as well as other areas of the juvenile justice system.
The jurisdictional planning assistance workshop is the latest step that the state has taken to initiate changes at the facility and to respond to a report issued by the American Civil Liberties Union last August that alleged overcrowding, rape, and brutality at the Windward facility for juveniles.
The group will meet with officials from the Hawai'i Youth Correctional Facility, the Office of Youth Services, the attorney general's office, Family Court, the prosecutor's office, the public defenders office, and others.
"These are the folks that are going to tell us what our best practices are in dealing with juvenile corrections," said Richard Bissen, first deputy attorney general and head of the attorney general's HYCF Task Force. "The people invited, who obviously share our concerns, are going to tell us how to improve even more."
The workshop is the first in a series of meetings with national experts to help shape the reform process at the youth facility and to take a closer look at juvenile justice in Hawai'i.
The eight experts, one of whom is a family court judge in Michigan, represent an array of fields under the juvenile justice umbrella and will offer advice on meeting national standards, critique current practices and plans, and compare the Hawai'i Youth Correctional Facility with similar facilities on the Mainland.
Among the experts is David Roush, director of the National Juvenile Detention Association, a center for research and professional development. Roush, a faculty member in the School of Criminal Justice at Michigan State University, has worked in juvenile justice for 33 years.
The workshop is paid for by a federal grant from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, an office in the Department of Justice.
Absent from the meeting will be the ACLU. The group was denied several requests to be invited to the workshop, a point of contention that ACLU legal director Lois Perrin outlined in an open letter to Gov. Linda Lingle on Monday. The letter asked the governor to intervene and open lines of communication between the state and the ACLU.
In response, the state said that it has bent over backward to cooperate with the ACLU, claiming that Perrin is the third ACLU legal director in less than a year, meaning she may not be completely up to speed with the state's progress at the youth facility. Brent White, the author of the report, left his post.
Bissen said it is not an appropriate time for the ACLU to take part in discussions. He said there are people invited to the workshop that would decline invitations if the ACLU was invited.
"We want to keep this to an intimate group of decision makers and policy makers," Bissen said. "This does not preclude the ACLU from being at future meetings and discussions. It is the first meeting we're having (of this nature), and we want a select group."
Reach Peter Boylan at 535-8110 or pboylan@honoluluadvertiser.com.
