Imagine the effect on people and communities if Hawaii developed social policies through a public health lens. Hawaii could then foresee the potential consequences and harms that certain policies might bring and incorporate that information into better solutions for some of our most intractable challenges.

Just as hospitals update their practices with the changing times and profiles of their patients, agencies across the criminal legal system could do the same. Hospitals develop discharge plans for patients leaving their care to provide the resources and tools that the discharged patient needs to take care of their own health; so, too, can agencies across the criminal legal system be as resourceful.

The view through a public health lens enables us to see the humanity of every person in all of our communities and encourages us to practice the Hawaiian values of laulima (cooperation), malama (to care for) and ha‘aha‘a (humility). A public health lens encourages all of us to practice the “Aloha Spirit,” the coordination of mind and heart within each person. It brings each person to the self. Each person must think and emote good feelings to others.

Looking through a public health lens would alter so many of our harmful policies that do more to promote criminalization than to prevent it.

There has been a lot of misinformation circulating about the bail bill: House Bill 1567. The purpose of bail in a criminal case is to ensure the accused shows up for trial.

The reality is that Hawaii has been enjoying a relatively low crime rate for the last few decades, yet any uptick in crime scares people as social media lights up with alarming posts ignoring any context. Inciting fear hurts communities. FDR said it best: “The only thing to fear, is fear itself.”

As readers, we must become more discerning when reading social media posts. We must always check the sources to understand their experience/credibility. Is the post biased toward one point of view or is it balanced? What language is used to describe incidents? We have to be wary of percentage increases, especially month-to-month or year-to-year as they can be misleading.

The impacts of poverty are huge, and it is uncomfortable to acknowledge the reality that almost half of Hawaii’s population live paycheck to paycheck and struggle to meet basic needs. These are our ALICE (Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed) individuals and families.

Wouldn’t it be better to create programs in the most impacted communities to lift our people out of poverty than to develop more penalties for people struggling to survive every day?

Hawaii’s jails house a disproportionate number of pretrial detainees: Hawaii Community Correctional Center, 61%; Kauai Community Correctional Center, 40%; Maui Community Correctional Center, 43%; and Oahu Community Correctional Center, 64%. At $219 a day per person, this costs millions of dollars to imprison people, many who cannot afford bail.

Imprisoning people who live on the margins of society, such as those living unsheltered, doesn’t help them. In 2020, close to 40% of the people admitted to Hawaii’s four jails reported being unsheltered or staying in an emergency or transitional shelter.

What if Hawaii committed to a public health approach for all social policies?

We would then be forced to realize the humanity of every imprisoned person as someone’s son or daughter, mom or dad, auntie or uncle, niece or nephew, friend or loved one.

In his book, “A Plague of Prisons — The Epidemiology of Mass Incarceration in America,” Ernest Drucker writes: “The public health model and its tools of epidemiological analysis, which have been used so successfully for the prevention of other public health threats, now has remarkable (if still largely untapped) potential for helping to mitigate the damages, and eventually end the epidemic, of mass incarceration.”

Jails are the gateway to prisons, especially for those on the lower end of the economic scale. Instead of building cages, enhancing law enforcement and creating a very lucrative industry for the profiteers of punishment, let’s work with the most impacted communities to develop what they need for their people to thrive.

Kat Brady is coordinator of the Community Alliance on Prisons.