No one told us that youth our age are entering the criminal justice system after truancies or school suspensions, that a high proportion of sex-trafficked youth are Native Hawaiian, or that people our age can be held in solitary confinement when incarcerated, with few limits.
As first-year college students, we learned about these problems — or, we say, opportunities to make a difference — not in a classroom, but as part of a policy internship program with the Opportunity Youth Action Hui (OYAH).
OYAH is a collaboration of organizations and individuals committed to reducing the harmful effects of a punitive incarceration system for youth and promoting Native Hawaiian equity in the justice system. OYAH seeks holistic and culturally informed approaches among agencies serving youth.
Our work as policy interns has been to identify legislation that will prevent youth incarceration and improve the criminal justice system. Of the 2,800 bills introduced in the Legislature, more than one hundred would make a difference in the lives of incarcerated youth, or Opportunity Youth.
OYAH has a specific commitment to the Native Hawaiian community, a group that is over-represented in various disadvantaged and troubled fields, including incarceration, homelessness, poverty, sex trafficking, abuse, poor health (both mental and physical), and more. According to a report by the American Civil Liberties Union, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders made up only 23% of adults in the state but a reported 47% of people incarcerated under Hawaii’s jurisdiction.
Read more at CivilBeat.org.
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