The Legislature continues to fund planning for a new jail, but a new jail won’t make our communities safer. Research shows incarceration doesn’t reduce reoffending; it often increases it by destabilizing lives.
People leave jails and prisons facing the same barriers — poverty, housing insecurity, untreated mental illness — that many faced before incarceration. Long sentences don’t deter crime when the root causes are systemic, not individual.
We say we value justice and community well-being, but our policies tell a different story. We criminalize the symptoms of societal failure while maintaining the very conditions that create them. Instead of more cages, we need investment in what truly keeps communities safe: living wages, affordable housing, child care, health care, education and real opportunity.
Our current approach pretends to move us forward, but it’s like walking up a down escalator — exhausting, ineffective and going nowhere.
We know this doesn’t work, and we hope that Gov. Josh Green does not commit to a failed system.
Luanna Peterson
Reimagining Public Safety Hawai‘i Coalition member Niu Valley
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