The 17-year-old boy involved in Tuesday’s shooting at Roosevelt High School isn’t the only Hawaii runaway who has found himself in a confrontation with the law.
Hawaii has a history of arresting more runaways than any other state in the union, said Meda Chesney-Lind, a criminologist and professor with the University of Hawaii.
Despite decades of both local and national efforts to "deinstitutionalize" status offenders, or youngsters arrested for offenses that would not be considered criminal if committed by adults — most notably runaways — Hawaii still arrests a large number of youth for these offenses, she said.
The Roosevelt student was shot after allegedly attacking three officers with a kitchen knife as they were attempting to take him into custody as a runaway, police said.
National crime statistics aren’t available to show how other states have been doing with arrests of runaways in the last few years. But previously the arrest trend was decidedly heading downward, Chesney-Lind said.
In Hawaii, meanwhile, the number of runaway arrests appears to have dipped but is holding relatively steady. Last year nearly 30 percent of the 8,690 juvenile arrests in Hawaii were for runaways, according to the state attorney general’s office.
In 2009 — the last year for which national statistics were available — arrests of Hawaii youth for running away accounted for 36.7 percent of juvenile arrests, the highest proportion in the nation, Chesney-Lind said.
By contrast, in California, runaways accounted for only 1.7 percent of juvenile arrests, while in Texas, a state known for its high incarceration rate and being tough on crime, only 7.1 percent of juvenile arrests were for running away, she said.
The state whose runaway arrests were the nation’s second highest was Kansas at 13.2 percent — less than a third of Hawaii’s nation-leading total. In Rhode Island and Maine, states whose population numbers resemble Hawaii, the comparable figures were 0.6 percent and 1.5 percent, respectively.
Chesney-Lind, chairwoman of the UH Women’s Studies Program, said federal law for 40 years has been pushing states to enact prevention services as a way of keeping runaways and truants out of the criminal justice system, and most states have been successful.
"It’s perplexing that Hawaii is such an outlier," she said. "Somehow we’ve shaped our response so that we push our kids into our (criminal justice) system."
Hawaii has to do a better job of prevention, agreed David Hipp, executive director of the state Office of Youth Services.
"Truancy and runaways are a gateway crime," Hipp said. "If kids are running away, they’re probably going to be running with the wrong crowd, and that’s a recipe for getting deeper into trouble."
Both Chesney-Lind and Hipp said there may be some help on the horizon.
Hipp said his office has been working with the Honolulu Police Department to implement a new program in which juvenile runaways and truants in the Kalihi area will be taken not to the police station, but to an "assessment center," where youngsters will be evaluated and referred to treatment and/or services, if necessary.
"It’s a huge step in the right direction," Chesney-Lind said.
The assessment center program should be up and running in a few months, Hipp said.
"We realize law enforcement has its hands full," he said. "We want our police officers fighting crime and not baby-sitting."
There are a number of related proposals now being considered by the state Legislature.
One bill asks the Office of Youth Services to coordinate a five-year "safe places for youth" pilot program where kids can find safe shelter and access services.
Another bill would continue state funding for Project Kealahou, a federally funded program that helps adolescent girls overcome abuse, neglect or other trauma, including running away and truancy.
Still another bill closes a loophole that allows a principal to let a student older than 16 drop out of school over disruptive behavior. The bill raises the age to 18.
Hipp said another helpful pilot project in the works is called REACH. It will establish an after-school program at five schools to keep intermediate students "on track and engaged" in the middle-school years. Hopefully, it can be expanded to the entire state, he said.
