Youth prison reform
group meets
The state opened a two-day training conference yesterday aimed at improving treatment of inmates at the state's youth prison, but excluding the group that first exposed alleged abuses at the Kailua lockup.
Juvenile justice and detention experts met with counselors, social workers and others who work with troubled youth as part of a broad effort to reform practices and improve conditions at the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility, officials said.
The conference at the Hilton Hawaiian Village comes days after the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaii renewed calls for Gov. Linda Lingle and the state to immediately correct alleged crowded, unsanitary and abusive conditions at the youth facility.
The civil rights group first brought the conditions to the state's attention last August, and issued an open letter Monday to Lingle saying that follow-up visits and interviews with youths indicate that little has been done to improve treatment of the youthful inmates.
State officials, including Lingle, argue they already have taken steps to reform the lockup, such as reassigning the top two administrators and using rehabilitation programs to reduce the inmate population to 68, down from an average of 90 in August.
The conference is moving ahead without the local ACLU, whose requests to participate in the training seminar have been rebuffed by state officials.
In the letter to Lingle, local ACLU Legal Director Lois Perrin said the conference could have helped both sides address and possibly resolve some of the concerns and problems that continue to be reported by youths at the facility.
"While we certainly saw this meeting as a step in the right direction, it certainly wasn't all that was required to address the acknowledged deficiencies at HYCF," Perrin said earlier this week.
First Deputy Attorney General Richard Bissen said there are some agencies that said they would not participate in the conference if the ACLU was invited. However, both he and Sharon Agnew, director of the state Office of Youth Services, said the ACLU might be invited to future events.
Agnew, whose office oversees the youth prison, said part of the reason the ACLU was left out was because these meetings are uncharted territory for many of the agencies.
"We're asking a lot of these agencies -- it's about interagency trust," she said. "For the first time, they're saying they're willing to move forward with us. We've never asked them to take the plunge with us."
Officials say the training conference is part of a larger effort to address the concerns and to show that the state takes the allegations seriously.
"We're trying to find some common threads of consensus and a willingness to address some issues," Agnew said.
The conference involves six trainers meeting with 38 representatives from state agencies and service providers.
"Several people have expressed the fact that it feels like, because it's a small group, it'll be easier to possibly get some movement forward," she said. "If this were a conference of 100 people, we couldn't accomplish what we're trying to accomplish here."
Other reform efforts being undertaken by the state include working with community groups, law enforcement officials, state judges and others to develop programs aimed at keeping troubled youths out of the legal system altogether.
"It's more than just improving the conditions at the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility," Bissen said.