This summer, Hawai`i made headlines for a milestone achievement several years in the making. Finally—and for the first time—there were no girls being held in the state’s only long-term juvenile placement facility, the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility (HYCF).
“Hawai`i achieved a milestone that few states ever hit,” said Hannah Green, program manager for Vera’s Ending Girls’ Incarceration (EGI) initiative. EGI partnered with HYCF, the Office of Youth Services (OYS), and the Pū’ā Foundation in 2018 to launch the work to end the incarceration of girls and gender-expansive youth in Hawai`i.
By Nazish Dholaki, Senior Writer, and Lindsay Rosenthal, Project Director for Vera Institute of Justice