For the first time since records began, Hawai‘i’s long-term youth correctional facility is holding no girls at all. It’s not a temporary fluke or the result of a sudden crime drop, but the outcome of a deliberate shift away from locking up girls and toward giving them the help they need.
In 2014, when Mark Patterson took over as administrator of the Hawai‘i Youth Correctional Facility, there were seven girls aged 13 to 19 behind its walls in Kailua. Many weren’t there for violent crimes but for things like running away from home, a pattern common across the United States. Patterson, who had previously run the women’s prison at the O‘ahu Community Correctional Center, saw that the approach wasn’t working. Most of these girls had fled abuse or neglect, and detention was compounding the harm.
Shifting the system
Patterson began steering the youth system toward what he described to San Quentin News as a more “healing” model. Instead of punishment, the focus would be on trauma-informed care: understanding what had happened to these girls, not just what they had done. The changes were practical as well as philosophical: court services worked to divert girls into community programmes, safe housing, and counselling, and the facility itself redesigned spaces to feel less like cells and more like classrooms or therapy rooms.
By mid-2016, the last girl had left the facility. Unlike in the past, she didn’t return. As The Washington Post later reported, that meant Hawai‘i was, for the first time, running a juvenile prison without any girls inside. It’s a milestone the state has held onto for long stretches ever since.
The shift fits into a national picture of falling juvenile incarceration rates. Between 2000 and 2020, more than 1,000 youth detention centres across the U.S. closed, including many of the largest. Vera Institute research shows that girls now make up a much smaller proportion of the youth justice population, and several states, including Maine and Vermont, have also gone through periods with zero girls in long-term custody. In New York City, the average is fewer than two at any one time.
Why girls were in the system to begin with
What makes Hawai‘i’s achievement stand out is that it directly addressed why girls were ending up behind bars. Patterson has been candid that most weren’t there because they posed a public danger. Many had been criminalised for “status offences”—behaviours that wouldn’t be crimes for an adult, such as running away or missing school, or for minor property offences linked to unstable home lives. Locking them up did little to change their circumstances.
By replacing detention with community-based interventions, the system aimed to break the cycle. That meant strengthening partnerships between probation officers, social workers, and local organisations. It also meant creating assessment centres where girls could go in a crisis instead of straight into custody. Patterson drew on the Hawaiian concept of a puʻuhonua, a place of refuge where someone can be welcomed back into the community after wrongdoing, rather than cast out.
As he explained in his San Quentin News interview, the goal was to meet girls where they were, give them safe places to stay, and help them heal from trauma. This was, in his view, more likely to lead to long-term safety for both the girls and the community than cycling them in and out of a locked facility.
Not perfection, but progress
Hawai‘i’s record isn’t flawless. In August 2022, two months after hitting the symbolic “zero girls” mark, a girl was admitted because there wasn’t a suitable alternative placement available. Advocates saw that not as a failure but as proof that the safety net still needs strengthening. Vera’s coverage of the milestone noted that continued investment in housing, mental health services, and community programmes is essential to making zero sustainable.
Even so, the results so far have been striking. The state has shown that with coordination and willpower, it’s possible to end the routine incarceration of girls without compromising public safety. And it’s done so in a way that resonates with Hawaiian cultural values, emphasising restoration and community care over isolation.
What other states can learn
The lessons aren’t unique to Hawai‘i. The same patterns exist elsewhere: girls ending up in detention for minor, non-violent behaviour that stems from unstable or unsafe situations. In many states, alternatives exist but aren’t coordinated well enough to catch girls before they fall into the system. Hawai‘i’s approach of creating clear diversion pathways, building crisis care capacity, and making sure all agencies share the same goal could be replicated in those places.
It also challenges the idea that detention is inevitable. Even in 2014, the thought of a youth prison with no girls would have sounded unrealistic to many in the system. Now it’s a reality, and other jurisdictions can point to it as proof that with the right support, incarceration can truly be a last resort.
That’s not just good for the girls who avoid a cell. Research repeatedly shows that juvenile detention disrupts education, increases the likelihood of reoffending, and worsens mental health outcomes. Redirecting girls into programmes that address their needs rather than punishing their behaviour is better for them and better for society.
A hopeful model
For Patterson, the work is personal. His years in the women’s prison taught him what happens when the system fails girls early—the same young people he now works to keep out of custody could, without intervention, become the women he once saw serving long sentences. The shift at the Hawai‘i Youth Correctional Facility is his attempt to rewrite that story.
As of now, the girls’ side of the Kailua facility stands empty. It’s a quiet milestone, but a powerful one. It says that a youth justice system can choose compassion over confinement, and that doing so can work.
If other states want to follow suit, the roadmap is there: listen to the girls, understand their circumstances, invest in community-based care, and make sure that detention really is the last option, not the first. Hawai‘i has shown it’s possible. The next step is proving it can be done everywhere.