Senate Concurrent Resolution: Requesting the Department of Public Safety to factilitate the delivery of the Huikahi Restorative Circles Program in Hawai’i Correctional Facilities.

WHEREAS, according to a study of United States Department
of Justice statistics conducted in 2002, fifty per cent of
American inmates will return to prison within two years of their
release; and

WHEREAS, a restorative circle is a group planning process
for individual inmates, their families, and prison staff that
results in a written transition plan for the inmate preparing to
leave prison; and

WHEREAS, a restorative circle is a group planning process
for individual inmates, their families, and prison staff that
results in a written transition plan for the inmate preparing to
leave prison; and

…WHEREAS, the Hawaii Restorative Circles program, renamed
“Huikahi Restorative Circles”, from the Hawaiian words rlhuill
meaning group and I1kahilr meaning individual, is a reentry
program mandated as part of Act 8, First Special Session Laws of
Hawaii 2007; and

…WHEREAS, John Braithwaite, Ph.D., Australian Research
Council Federation Fellow, professor at the Australian National
University, recipient of the 2006 Stockholm Prize in
Criminology, author of many books and publications, including
Crime, Shame and Reintegration, and recognized as a major force in the restorative justice movement says, “Hawaii is a world leader in innovation for reentry planning for prisoners because of its work on Restorative Circles. We all look forward to the next stage in this Hawaiian leadership toward a more effective way to prevent crime by reintegrating released inmates into a supportive community”; and

…WHEREAS, a recent evaluation of Pono Kaulike, a similar
restorative justice program, revealed that, out of a group of
thirty-eight participants and a control group of twenty-nine
individuals, the people who participated in the Pono Kaulike
program had a significantly lower rate of recidivism — eighteen
per cent, compared to the control group which had a fifty-one
per cent rate of repeating crime (Walker, Lorenn and Hayashi,
Leslie (2007). Pono Kaulike: A Hawaii Criminal Court Provides
Restorative Jus ti ce Practices for Healing Rela tionships.
Federal Probation. 71 (3) : 18-24. ) ; and

…BE IT RESOLVED by the Senate of the Twenty-fifth
Legislature of the State of Hawaii, Regular Session of 2010, the
House of Representatives concurring, that the Department of
Public Safety is requested to facilitate and support federal
grant proposals for the funding of the Huikahi Restorative
Circles program to address the backlog of requests from
incarcerated individuals wanting to make amends for their past
behavior; and

Read the full legislation.