Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 26, Number 10, 1 October 2009 — Loeal civil rights panel to examine criminal justice disparities [ARTICLE]

Loeal civil rights panel to examine criminal justice disparities

By Liza Simon Public Affairs Specialist Disparities in the state's criminal justice system will be the focus next year of the Hawai'i State Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. At a Sept. 23 orientation and planning meeting in Honolulu, HSAC members selected the topic - over affordable housing - as the most pressing civil rights issue confronting Hawai'i residents. Disparities in the criminal justice system was selected after a longer list of topics had been dismissed earlier this year, including language access and the special status of Native Hawaiians. The latter topic had been the preferred ehoiee of HSAC members Thomas Macdonald and William H. Burgess. Macdonald said that the topic of special Native Hawaiian status is related to acts of racial violence against Caucasians by Hawaiians. He called this a growing trend and said it constituted the most pernicious civil rights problem in Hawai'i, furthered evidenced, he said, by Native Hawaiian anti-annexation demonstrations that marked the August commemoration of statehood. Siding with Macdonald, Burgess distributed to other HSAC members copies of his letter to the U.S. commission chairman stating that "escalating forces favoring supremacy for Native Hawaiians" constituted "the most pressing need for civil rights attention" in the state. Underscoring his position, Burgess wrote, "The Akaka bill would bring Apartheid to Hawai'i." Burgess and Macdonald have been outspoken activists in organizations that fight Hawaiian programs and federal recognition of Native Hawaiians proposed in the Akaka Bill. The two were appointed to HSAC terms under the Bush administration, raising concems that their conservative ideological stances could tip the halanee of HS AC, defined by law as a bipartisan and allvolunteer body with a mandate to evaluate and remedy loeal civil rights complaints by consulting with the USCCR. After agreeing to undertake the topic of racial disparities in the ^EE ŪISPARITES ūn page ŪG

DISPARITES

Continued from page 03 criminal system, a majority of HSAC members agreed to enlarge the scope of study by deleting the word "racial." HS AC's Jackie Young said this would enahle a wider examination of gender or age-based discrimination, whieh might be the basis of civil rights violations in Hawai'i's criminal justice system. "We want to be able to ferret out to the extent to whieh the larger problem of systemic violence against women and children accounts for disparities in our criminal justice system," she said. Young said current research by experts at the University of Hawai'i shows that "there is a stunning number

of women in prison, and they are not there, because they perpetrate violenee, but because they are vulnerable to violence." Young said the criminal behavior of women is often linked to their experience of being the victims of violence. "Women are incarcerated at a high rate for nonviolent crimes such as prostitution and substance abuse and have the additional issue of having to raise families while (coping with) incarceration," said Young. "This is a systemic problem we need to look at." Out of several USCCR-approved approaches available to state advisory committees, HSAC opted to hold a briefing to examine disparities in the criminal-justice system. The approach is a relatively low intensity activity in whieh members will ask experts for information on the disparities in Hawai'i. Had HSAC selected a higher level activity

such as fact-finding, USCCR approval would have been required. HS AC member Amy Agbayani said she regretted the absence at the meeting of HSAC member Daphne Barbee, a Honolulu attorney who originally proposed that the committee concentrate next year on disparities in Hawai'i's criminal justice system. USSCR regional director Peter Minarik, based in Atlanta, said Barbee's reappointment to the commission had been put on hold while the USSCR conducts an investigation into alleged controversial remarks by Barbee in the presence of USSCR commissioners. Minarik, who was in Honolulu to provide guidance for HSAC's planning meeting, aeknowledged Agbayani's request to enter concerns about Barbee's absence into the official record of the meeting. ■