Hawai’i Friends of Justice & Civic Education is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization (NGO) established in 1980 that is committed to advancing civic behavior and improving the justice system.
Nature and Purpose of Hawai‘i Friends – the mission of Hawai‘i Friends is to increase democratic behavior by engaging people in positive civic activities and decision making. It designs, implements and measures pilot projects using applied learning in an effort to generate evidence-based knowledge of what works to improve civic behavior.
Public Health Approach – since its inception in 1980, when it piloted a Street Law program to rehabilitate youth involved with the justice system, Hawai‘i Friends has used public health approaches, including cooperative education, solution-focused, restorative justice and other engaged learning practices, to promote positive civic experiences and improve the justice system.
As the result of a day-long retreat in July 2014, with the Hawaii Friends’ board and Patti Lyons, founder of the Consuelo Foundation, its vision was articulated as: Hawai’i Friends envisions a humanitarian justice system that provides processes for hope, healing and rehabilitation.
Mission – Hawai‘i Friends of Restorative Justice trains, advocates, develops programs, researches and educates evidence based practices that rehabilitate, heal and give hope.
Values – as an organization, Hawai’i Friends holds these governing values:
- Approach individuals with respect and dignity in a humanitarian manner which is just
- Provide the opportunity for emotional and physical healing
- Act in a manner that is solution focused, repairs harm, and creates hope
- Do this in a confidential manner that is democratic and fosters autonomy and transparency.
The current system is mainly authoritarian, paternalistic and often harmful. A more effective justice system would value:
- Forgiveness
- Responsibility/RestitutionReconciliation
- Communication
- Resiliency
- Rehabilitation
- The Human Spirit
BOARD OF DIRECTORS – Hawai’i Friends’ board of directors for the last three years:
Richard Turbin, Esq., President – Rich is the founder and President of the law firm Turbin Chu where he practices in the areas of personal injury, wrongful death and malpractice in Honolulu, Hawai’i. He received his BA, magna cum laude, from Cornell University and his JD from Harvard Law School. Mr. Turbin served as the 2005 President of the Hawai’i State Bar Association, and was elected to the National Council of Bar Presidents of the American Bar Association (ABA); Chair of the ABA Tort & Insurance Practice Section; elected President of Consumer Lawyers 2002 – 2003; Civil Rights Commissioner for Hawai’i 2002 – 2006; Traphagen Distinguished Alumni speaker at Harvard Law School 2004; received Pursuit of Justice Award of the ABA Tort & Insurance Practice Section 2006; has taught numerous courses and written articles for ABA & a text book; served as Chair of Waialae Kahala Neighborhood Board 1994 – 2004; member MADD and Alliance Francaise of Hawai’i.
Roger Epstein, Esq., Vice President – Roger is a graduate of Georgetown University Law School. He has been a lawyer with one of Hawaii’s largest law firms, Cades Schutte, in Honolulu for the last 30 years where he is a senior partner. Roger specializes in tax law. He helped form the Hawai‘i Forgiveness Project (http://www.hawaiiforgivenessproject.org ) and is dedicated to improving our community.
Svitlana Pronina Campbell, Secretary – Svitlana is a teacher and lawyer born in the Ukraine, who settled in Honolulu in 1999. Svitlana graduated from the University of Hawaii William S. Richardson School of Law with both J.D. and LL.M. degrees concentrating on international and business law matters. She has taught mandatory classes on basics of Preventative Law in Ukraine high schools, offered classes on drug and crime prevention, and hosted a legal radio program in her home country. She is a passionate supporter of education and preventative Law in Hawaii.
Madonna Castro Perez, Treasurer – Madonna works at the Legal Aid Society of Hawai‘i (LASH) in the Fair Housing unit as a Civil Rights Advocate. Prior to working at LASH, Madonna interned in Washington, D.C. at the American Legislative Exchange council and doubled majored in Political Science and History. Shortly after, she moved to Hawai‘i for graduate school and received her Masters in Pacific Islands Studies. A passion to serve others, she volunteers at random places and events. From holding a sign for three hours on the side of the road in Hawai‘i Kai to waking up at 5:30 am to count whales; there is always something interesting that she helps out with. In her spare time, she likes watching Korean dramas, eating delicious food with friends, running, and documenting her cooking and eating adventures on thenosyfoodcritic.blogspot.com.
Cheri Tarutani, MSW, LCSW – Cheri is an Instructor with the University of Hawaii Manoa, School of Social Work Distance Education program. Prior to joining the UH faculty, she was a Child and Adult Protection Specialist for Child Welfare Services for 7 years. During that time, she was the designated Family Drug Court worker and was part of the Family Drug Court team that was awarded the Natural Collaborative Leader Award in 2004 from the Mediation Center of the Pacific. Ms. Tarutani has a Bachelor of Arts in Women’s Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles and a Masters in Social Work from the University of Hawaii, Manoa.
Amphan “Amphay” Champathong – Amphay graduated from the University of Hawaii at Manoa with a Bachelors of Arts in Sociology in 1997. He also completed his Masters program at the University of Hawaii with a Master of Social Work-Child and Family Concentration in 2002. Amphay recently received his Juris Doctorate from the William S. Richardson School of Law in May of 2011 and is a licensed attorney in the State of Hawaii. He has spent the last 14 years working in child welfare. Amphay’s career began as an assistant with the Department of Human Services (DHS), Child Welfare Services in 1997. From 2000 to 2006, he worked in various sections of DHS as a social worker doing case management and overflow investigations in child abuse and neglect. In 2006, he moved to the judiciary and worked as a court officer in the 587 unit, dealing exclusively with child abuse and neglect cases. In March, 2011, Amphay became the program manager with the Family Court’s Court Appointed Special Advocate Program, formerly known as the Volunteer Guardian Ad Litem Program.
Kellen Kashiwa, OD – Dr. Kellen Kashiwa is a low-vision specialist. As a licensed doctor of optometry, he is trained in the examination and management of patients with visual impairments that cannot be corrected with pharmaceutical or surgical interventions, conventional prescription eyeglasses or contact lenses. Born and raised in Hawaii, Dr. Kashiwa earned his Doctor of Optometry Degree from Pacific University College of Optometry in Oregon, where he concentrated in low vision and retinal disease. He previously served as a technician and diagnostic photographer at the Retina Institute of Hawaii from 2008 to 2009. Dr. Kashiwa completed internships in Japan and China, and has seen over 3,000 patients doing optometric humanitarian work in the Philippines, Peru, and Nicaragua.
Elizabeth Naholowa`a Murph – Elizabeth is Native Hawaiian and originally from Honolulu. She received her B.S. in Computer Science & Information Systems Science from East Tennessee State University in 1983. She worked with the Harold K.L. Castle Foundation and Consuelo Foundation on Oahu, as well as the Hawaii Island Chamber of Commerce in Hilo. Additionally, she has been a part-time high school mathematics teacher and Bible bookstore manager. Elizabeth is a Notary Public for the State of Hawai‘i and serves on the Board of Directors of Mental Health America of Hawaii, where she chairs the governance committee. Since 2010, she has also been a volunteer at Women’s Community Correctional Center, Hawai‘i’s only women’s prison. She has been married to Timothy for 36 years. They have four adult children – Rebecca, Jordan, Sarah and her husband Manly Kanoa, III, and three grandchildren – Emma, Grace and Judah.
VOLUNTEER EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR – Lorenn Walker is a public health educator and restorative lawyer (www.lorennwalker.com) who develops, implements, researches and publishes the results of social learning processes using restorative justice and solution-focused approaches. Insoo Kim Berg a co-founder of solution-focused brief therapy mentored her and assisted her in designing programs including for homeless and foster youth, and imprisoned people. Lorenn and Ben Furman, a Finish psychiatrist, developed and provide a free online program for individuals on restorative and solution-focused apology and forgiveness www.apologyletter.org. She is on the Fulbright Specialist roster until 2018 for international peacemaking training. In addition to administering Hawai’i Friends of Restorative Justice, she teaches speech courses for the University of Hawai’i. She first became involved with Hawai’i Friends in 1994 when she was the attorney mock trial coach for Waialua High School and was working as trial lawyer for the state of Hawai’i. Since then Hawai’i Friends has changed its name and has shifted its focused from law related education, e.g. mock trial, to restorative justice. She gives her time to the organization as is executive director (ED) and receives minimal compensation from grants and donations for her work.
2013 – 2014 PROGRAMS PROVIDED The following programs were piloted as follows:
1. Huikahi Reentry Circles: a reentry and transition planning process for incarcerated people and their loved ones and Modified Huikahi Restorative Circles: for incarcerated people who meet with other incarcerated supporters (often leads to circles with loved ones). The reentry circle model was developed in 2004 with Kat Brady and Hawai’i’s Community Alliance on Prisons and Ted Sakai who was the former warden at Waiawa Correctional Facility and is the state’s current Department of Public Safety director. To date have provided 126 reentry circles mainly for incarcerated individuals in Hawai’i with loved ones and family. Additionally we have provided over 150 modified circles for people in Hawai’i prisons and one for an individual in California. We also provided a circle for an individual exiting probation and her loved ones; three circles in California for individuals on probation who met with their loved ones as a diversion from incarceration; one for an individual in Tokyo who was formerly imprisoned; and one for an individual on parole in Vermont.
2. 12-Week Cognitive Course on Restorative Justice: Restorative Justice as a Solution-Focused Approach to Conflict and Wrongdoing is an interactive 12-week training program for incarcerated people introducing them to cognitive, behavioral and emotional insight and skill-building for criminal and substance abuse desistance. We have provided this cognitive and behavioral course that teaches emotional intelligence since 2004.
3. Annual Parolee Completion Celebration: 2014 marked our 6th annual event to honor all the people who successfully completed parole in the preceding six months, the inspirational parole officers who do their best to encourage rehabilitation with an optimistic view of their clients, and to bring the Hawai’i justice community together in a positive shared process to encourage their continued best efforts.
4. Reentry Circle Facilitator training: a two-day immersion training that included two live reentry circles for 10 prospective facilitators.
1. HUIKAHI REENTY CIRCLES (WITH FAMILIES & MODIFIED)
We provided 9 circles (through December 2014) for incarcerated women with their families and 14 modified circles for women in the 12-week cognitive course on restorative justice. We also provided an imprisoned man (1) with a circle at Halawa prison; two (2) individuals and their families with reentry circles who were exiting parole in Honolulu; a formerly imprisoned man (1) in Tokyo; a man (1) on parole in Vermont; and ten (10) reentry circles for incarcerated youth in Hawai’i’s youth correctional facility (HYCF) for a total of 39 reentry circles that 57 people participated in 2014.
To date we have provided a total 126 Huikahi Circles that 559 people have participated in, since the pilot began in 2005 with a continued 100% satisfaction of all the participants reporting that they believe the process was healing and positive.
3. 12 -WEEK COGNITIVE COURSE ON RESTORATIVE JUSTICE
In late 2013 and through 2014 five (5) courses of the 12-week Restorative Justice as a Solution-Focused Approach to Conflict and Wrongdoing training course was provided for imprisoned women. A total 107 women participated in the course. During the three courses many of the women who had Modified Circles also applied for full Circles with their families including three women who spent most of their time in closed custody (isolation) for the 5 to 10 years they have been incarcerated. They each saw their families for the first time in many years and since then have had continued visits from them. One of these women is leaving prison in March after 10 years having served her entire sentence (aka: maxing out) and she will be going home to her family. Over $2000 was expended on materials including paper and folders, and books for the women during the course.
4. PAROLEE COMPLETION CELEBRATION – RESTORATIVE RITUAL
We held our sixth parole completion events in the Hawai’i Supreme Court on November 6, 2014. About 60 people, including the Chief Justice, other people working in the justice system including judges, parole board members, lawyers, along with people who are successfully completing parole, people on parole and out of prison and their loved ones, attended the event.
The Parole Completion Celebration is restorative celebration honoring both those who work in the parole system and the consumers of it and those who are also affected by it (e.g. the parolee’s loved ones).
A paper by federal judge Leslie Kobayashi and our ED will be published in a book in 2015 about this restorative and therapeutic event (title below under papers in press about our work). The parole completion celebration is a positive ritual that we believe is helpful in promoting desistance from crime and substance abuse.
UNIVERSITY ASSISTANCE TO ORGANIZATION
UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I INTERN
Erin Ka’ahea-Gross is our MSW intern from the University of Hawai’i for the academic year 2014-2015. She has been a major resource to our organization and we are hopeful she will become an excellent circle facilitator. We also had a Canadian visiting professor of restorative justice observe our work for a week in 2014. We also hosted a class studying restorative justice from Hawai’i’s BYU university in Laie visit our 12-week course.
CHAMINADE UNIVERSITY OF HONOLULU BUSINESS MARKETING PLAN
A group of three students from Chaminade business professor Wayne Tanna’s course prepared a marketing plan for the organization in 2014. It mainly suggests using social media to make our presence more known and to re-design our website (which Erin and volunteer Allison Jacobs have done with more plans for revision).
UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI’I SHIDLER SCHOOL OF BUSINESS MBA PROJECT
Two MBA students have begun working on a strategic plan for the organization to be complete in the spring 2015. Our main goal for the organization is to make it sustainable. Right now we rely almost exclusively on volunteer and pro bono efforts and need to have more support to keep the organization going when our key members can no longer preform duties.
2014 ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS & OTHER MEDIA
We have published numerous papers on our work including a book on the reentry circles. Academic papers currently in press on our work include:
Walker, Tarutani & McKibben, (in press), Benefits of Restorative Reentry Circles for Children of Incarcerated Parents in Hawai’i, in Promoting the Participation of Children across the Globe: From Social Exclusion To Child-Inclusive Policies, Eds. Gal & Faedi Duramy, London: Oxford University Press
Walker & Kobayashi, (in press), Restorative & Therapeutic Reentry Rituals, in Offender release and supervision: The role of Courts and the use of discretion, Ed. Evans, Netherlands: Wolf Legal Publishing
Walker, (in press), Applied positive criminology: Reentry and transition planning circles for incarcerated people and their loved ones, in Positive Criminology: The Good Can Overcome the Bad, Eds. Ronel & Segev, London: Routledge Books
Walker, (submitted but book status unclear), Restorative Rituals for Parole Completion: Inspiring Parolees and Those Who Provide The Justice System, in Restorative Justice In India, Eds. R.Thilagaraj & Liu, J., London: Springer
Our ED will also be submitting another book chapter, The Psychological Benefits of Restorative Reentry Practices for the Innocent: Taking responsibility, In Gavrielides’s The Psychology of Restorative Justice Farnham: Ashgate Publishing http://www.rj4all.info/content/RJPsychology
The local Hawai’i newspaper the Star Advertiser published an oped written about by the ED in July 3, 2014: Let’s Focus More On Restorative Justice, Not Just Punishment http://lorennwalker.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/StarAdvertiser070314_opedSB60.pdf.
Our Vice President Roger Epstein appeared on Hawai‘i local KITV and spoke about our work in December 2014.
In July 2014 National Public Radio (NPR) interviewed our ED about how she became interested in her restorative justice work http://www.npr.org/2014/07/06/329230105/after-assault-woman-finds-hope-and-career-in-restorative-justice.
The ED has accepted an invitation from the Solution-Focused Brief Therapy Association http://www.sfbta.org to be its 2015 keynote speaker on our work at its annual conference held in Wilmington, North Carolina.
VERMONT WORKSHOP ON REENTRY CIRCLES
Our ED was invited to provide a daylong pre-conference workshop July 15, 2014 at this national conference on https://www.uvm.edu/~ues/restorativejustice/?Page=schedule.html. ED’s colleague Penelope Griffith from Washington DC provided the workshop with her. Over 30 people participated and provided positive evaluations of what they learned, including from observing the actual reentry circle they observed of a Burlington man who is was on probation, which ED convened several months before the workshop. The man also highly rated the reentry circle he participated in with his mother on the phone from another state.
ZEHR INSTITUTE CONSULTATION
Our ED was invited to participate in RJ: The Next Generation a three year project by The Zehr Institute at the Eastern Mennonite University, Center for Justice & Peacemaking (Howard Zehr is one of the world’s most renowned RJ experts). She will travel to Virginia in May 2015 for a week to participate in the first year’s efforts.
REENTRY CIRCLE ON LINE FACILITATOR COURSE
We plan to develop and provide an eight (8) week course online using the Udemy (https://www.udemy.com/) platform to teach the skills necessary to facilitate the reentry circles. We will develop it in conjunction with our handbook on the process that we continue to sell through Amazon. We hope to have the online course started by the middle of January 2015.
BOARD RETREAT JUNE 14, 2014 covered a number of topics (see goals) including changing the name of the organization to Hawai’i Friends of Restorative Justice.
JUVENILE JUSTICE REFORM IN HAWAI’I
A task force facilitated by the Pew Foundation in 2013 to assist in discussions to amend Hawai’i’s juvenile justice laws, that the ED was selected by the state to participate in, was successful. Less youth will be incarcerated as a result of the amended law in 2014. On December 9, 2014 a group of about 15 individuals met at the state capitol to discuss the need for RJ and financial and ethical issues with private companies operating and owning prisons. Legislation is being drafted for the next session on these subjects.
GOALS FOR 2015
- Find funding for independent evaluation of the circles and 12-week cognitive course.
- Develop and provide 8 week online reentry circle facilitator course.
- Improve internet presence as suggested by the Chaminade students
- Start a pilot with an adult or juvenile Hawai’i court designing an RJ intervention as a diversion to incarceration and measure effectiveness.
- Continue reentry circle work and disseminating results of research on it with academic and other publications.
Respectfully submitted: Lorenn Walker (by email)
Volunteer Executive Director
Hawai’i Friends of Justice & Civic Education
Date: December 28, 2014
