Hawai‘i Friends of Civic & Law-Related Education is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization established in 1980 that is committed to advancing civic behavior and improving the justice system. 

Nature and Purpose of Hawai‘i Friends

Hawai‘i Friends of Justice & Civic Education's mission is to increase democratic behavior by engaging people in positive civic activities and decision making.  It designs, implements and measures the effectiveness of interactive teaching programs 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, restorative justice and other engaged learning practices, to promote positive civic experiences and improve the justice system.

We the People Program:

Hawai‘i Friends currently provides We the People, a United States Constitutional law program that uses cooperative education, for high school students.  Students from across the country compete annually in mock legislative hearings concerning contemporary legal issues in Washington D.C.  Please contact program director Sandra Cashman for more information:  This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Violence Prevention Through Cooperative Learning Program: 

Hawai‘i Friends has developed a unique literacy and cooperative education based violence prevention program, Violence Prevention Through Cooperative Learning.  It is a project for secondary students at risk of dropping out of school and has been provided to hundreds of teenagers and thousands of elementary students in Hawai‘i. 

Hawai‘i Friends often provides the program as a pilot to Hawai‘i public schools. The curriculum for the program, along with evaluation tools, is provided freely to schools and is available upon request to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it  

Reading Stories to Change the World is an article describing this innovative program featuring Wai‘anae High School students at risk of dropping out of school.  Another article about the program was published in Reclaiming Children and Youth, a national journal for violence prevention practitioners in 2006. 

In 2007 Hawai‘i Friends provided the program in conjunction with a restorative justice and solution-focused pilot project at a middle school in Honolulu that showed increased student attendance and decreased bullying behavior.  The report on this project is available from Lorenn Walker at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it   

Restorative Justice:

Since 1996 Hawai‘i Friends has promoted restorative justice, which is based on democratic decision making and applies public health education principals, i.e. it is empowering, relies on active learning experiences for affecting positive behavioral, emotional, and cognitive changes for individuals and communities.

Restorative justice (RJ) provides victims, and the community, opportunities to heal and strengthen their lives and relationships, after suffering an incident of crime or social injustice.  RJ also offers offenders an opportunity to learn from wrongdoing.  Restorative justice is based on the ancient conflict resolution practices of many indigenous cultures including Hawaiians. 

Most restorative justice experiences result in increased optimism of participants and observers.  RJ has been studied worldwide and has been shown to reduce recidivism in a number of settings, i.e. prisons, juvenile and adult court cases, schools. See, Sherman & Strang, Restorative Justice: the evidence, 2007 at http://www.smith-institute.org.uk/download-pages/download_restorative-justice-full-report.htm

Restorative justice deals with wrongdoing and social injustice where specific offenders may not be identifiable (See, Braithwaite, Restorative Justice and Responsive Regulation, 2002). 

For a small organization Hawai‘i Friends has been extremely effective in developing and measuring the effectiveness of unique restorative justice programs and disseminating information about them across the world.

Since 1997 Hawai‘i Friends has worked with public housing residents; juvenile and adult crime victims and offenders; homeless youth; children in foster care; prison inmates and their loved ones; public schools; the Hawai‘i State public housing authority; the Honolulu Police Department; the Hawai‘i State courts; and Hawai‘i State prisons; to develop, implement, evaluate and publish the results of its innovative restorative justice programs.

In 2010 Hawai‘i Friends is piloting a restorative ritual for successful parolees and probationers with assistance of professors John Braithwaite author of Crime, Shame and Reintegration, and Shadd Maruna, author of Making Good:  How Ex-Convicts Reform and Rebuild Their Lives.

Hawai‘i Friends’ has developed numerous innovative restorative justice processes and programs in many diverse areas including:

Public Housing Community Pilot:

Hawai‘i Friends first worked with public housing facilities in 1997 providing restorative justice processes for public housing residents and managers, and published the first article on its work: “A Hawai'i Public Housing Community Implements Conferencing: A Restorative Approach to Conflict Resolution” in the Journal of Housing & Community Development, Nov/Dec. 2000 (http://www.restorativejustice.org/articlesdb/articles/5404).

Juvenile Justice Diversion:

In 1999 Hawai‘i Friends piloted a restorative justice program for juveniles, Restorative Conferences:  A New Approach for Juvenile Justice in Honolulu, which was considered by Larry Sherman and Heather Strang in the preparation of their Smith Institute report, Restorative Justice: the evidence (http://www.smith-institute.org.uk/download-pages/download_restorative-justice-full-report.htm).  Hawai‘i Friends consistently receives requests for information about this juvenile justice program.

Victims of Offenses Without Known Offenders Program:

In 2001 Hawai‘i Friends developed, applied and measured the results of a restorative justice process for victims where there are no known offenders (Restorative Justice Without Offender Participation: A Pilot Program for Victims http://www.realjustice.org/library/lwalker04.html). 

Before Hawai‘i Friends developed this application for victims, it was widely felt that restorative justice is only useful when there is a known offender of a wrongdoing.  Seventy percent of all crime in the United States, however, goes without any offender ever being identified.  Hawai‘i Friends’ application of restorative justice for these victims provided healing to many who before were considered unable of benefiting from this approach.

Pono Kaulike an Adult Criminal Court Pilot Program:

In 2002 Hawai‘i Friends developed an important restorative justice pilot project for a Honolulu criminal court where mainly intimate and domestic violence parties engage in restorative justice processes, either together or separately (2004, Hawaii Bar Journal, Pono Kaulike: A Restorative Justice Pilot Program http://www.restorativejustice.org/articlesdb/articles/5401 and Pono Kaulike: A Hawaii Court Provides Restorative Justice Practices for Healing Relationships, Walker & Hayashi, Federal Probation Journal, Vol. 71, No. 3, 18-24, 2007 http://www.uscourts.gov/fedprob/December_2007/hawaiianCriminalCourt.html). 

PONO KAULIKE REDUCES RECIDIVISM:  Hawai‘i Friends has completed an evaluation of  the program for recidivism reduction funded by the Hawaii Justice Foundation.  The research confirms that people who had the Pono Kaulike intervention had significantly less incidents of re-offending than people who did not participate in Pono Kaulike.  The results have been published in Pono Kaulike: Reducing Violence with Restorative and Solution-Focused Approaches, Federal Probation Journal, Walker & Hayashi, Vo. 73. No. 1, June 2009 paper http://www.uscourts.gov/fedprob/June_2009/FocusedApproaches.html  Please email Lorenn Walker at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it for more information. 

Prison Programs:

In 2004 Hawai‘i Friends, in collaboration with the Hawai‘i state Department of Public Safety and the Community Alliance on Prisons, created and applied two innovative prison programs. 

Huikahi Restorative Circles:

The Huikahi Restorative Circle process, which is for imprisoned people, their families and victims to addresses the incarcerated person's needs for a successful reentry into the community (crime and drug free), and includes the need for reconciliation for all the participants, has been pioneering work. Two papers have been published that tell the story of one family that had one of the first circles in 2005 and follows up with them five years later. Research shows the circles reduce recidivism and that participants have sustained satisfaction and healing as a result of the circles even in cases where the incarcerated person has relapsed/reoffended and is re-incarcerated. Please see the two companion papers published June 2006, Federal Probation Journal, “Restorative Circles: A Reentry Planning Process for Hawaii Inmates” and June 2010, Federal Probation Journal, "Huikahi Restorative Circles: A Public Health Approach to Reentry Planning" available at: http://www.uscourts.gov/FederalCourts/ProbationPretrialServices/FederalProbationJournal.aspx

The Restorative Circle process was the subject of a Hawai‘i state legislative bill that was passed to fund the Circles and is part of a grass roots movement in Hawai‘i to improve the prison system and to provide more effective prisoner reentry processes to include restorative justice (see: http://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/site1/docs/getstatus2.asp?billno=SB932).

Unfortunately Hawai‘i's innovative Reentry Law that was passed over a governor's veto was not funded by the Linda Lingle administration (see: Restorative Justice is a Mandated Component of Hawai'is Reentry System, Brady and Walker, Justice Connections, Issue 6, Summer 2008 avaialbe on line from:  http://www.lorennwalker.com/articles.htm).

The country of Belgium, which legally mandates restorative justice be applied at all levels of criminal cases, piloted its own Restorative Circle process with select inmates at two prisons in the Flanders region of that country. People from all over the world have contacted Hawai'i Friends about the Huikahi Restorative Circle program.

2009 Video of mock Restorative Circle with discussion by former Circle participants on line at:  http://vimeo.com/6673308   

Modified Restorative Circles:

Since developing the Restorative Circle program Hawai‘i Friends has applied a similar process for incarcerated people whose families and loved one are not interested or are unable to participate.  Instead a group of incarcerated friends participates as supporters.  The Modified Restorative Circles model is a promising intervention for assisting incarcerated people develop reentry plans that addresses ways she or he may reconcile without victim participation.

A paper was published in December 2009 describing this process, Modified Restorative Circles: A Reintegration Group Planning Process that Promotes Desistance, Walker, with the Contemporary Justice Review journal, and is available at: http://www.lorennwalker.com/articles.htm

Facilitator Training for Incarcerated People:

Hawai‘i Friends has also designed and trained over 75 imprisoned people in Hawai‘i on restorative justice facilitation, emotional intelligence and solution-focused language skills. 

This program has shown promising results (2006, Corrections Today, “A Gift of Listening for Hawaii’s Inmates” http://www.restorativejustice.org/articlesdb/articles/7367.  (The article is also for sale on Amazon.com by the publisher). 

Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence and Social Intelligence, www.danielgoleman.com, has said that this prison work is “magnificent.”

Community Conversations on Restorative Justice:

This project showed that the community overwhelming wants to see restorative justice used in prisons and for criminal cases in Hawai‘i. 

Representatives of Hawai‘i Friends and past participants in Hawai‘i Friends restorative justice programs made a series of presentations between July 2006 and February 2007 at different public and private meetings on O‘ahu and Maui. 

The nature of restorative justice and the possibilities of its use in the community were the subject of the presentations.  Input from individuals at the meetings was collected on surveys that provided the information that  confirms the community would like to see restorative justice used in our criminal and prison systems.  The program was supported by a small grant from the Hawai‘i Justice Foundation.  Please email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it if you want a copy of this report.  

Restorative & Solution-Focused Family Conferences:

October 2008 - October 2009 we piloted a new intervention for youth charged with status offenses and referred from the Family Court of the First Circuit in Honolulu in collaboration with the court and at the suggestion of Judge Bode Uale. In 1999, when we did our first juvenile justice project with the Honolulu Police Department, we discovered the need for a more effective interventions for youth and families involved with status offenses. These offenses are usually for runaway, truancy, beyond parental control. If the youth were age 18 there would be no offense.  Status offenses only apply to minors.  We worked for several months on the basic design of the Solution-Focused Family Conference and conducted the first one on March 13, 2009.  We provided 13 interventions for families, which they reported were helpful in preventing the youths' further involvement with the justice system. 

Parolee Restorative Redemption Celebration

2009 - 2010 under the guidance of professors John Braithwaite and Shadd Maruna, we are conducting restorative celebrations for people who successfully complete state parole on O'ahu, Hawai'i, and a select group who complete probation with Judge Steven Alm and possibly other state Circuit Courts.  The first parolee celebration was held at the Hawai'i Supreme Court March 31, 2010.  One more parolee celebration is scheduled for Wednesday October 6, 2010 and hopefully we will have two with several individual probationers and their loved ones. 

The model for the parolees is a large group format with family and friends and others in the community who have successfully completed parole and or are out of prison. Judges, police, service providers and advocates who work with incarcerated people are also invited to participate. The parobationer's process will be held privated in the judge's chambers or courtroom.  An evaluation of the project will be conducted in 2011 reporting the results of participant surveys.  Future recidivism results will be reported.

Publications:

Hawai‘i Friends informs the world on its innovative work and has published numerous articles in different journals for professionals working in the areas it has introduced the programs including Principal Leadership for school administrators; the Federal Probation Journal and Corrections Today for judicial and corrections professionals; the Hawai‘i Bar Journal for the legal community; and the Journal for Housing and Community Development for public housing administrators. 

Please see below Published Articles Linked for links to most of its articles.

The newly revised third edition of, Interviewing for Solutions, by Peter Dejong and Insoo Kim Berg, a best selling text for counselors and social workers, includes a seven-page description of Hawai‘i Friends’ restorative justice prison programs. 

In 2008 the Journal of Family Psychotherapy included an article on a promising restorative justice program for homeless youth, envisioned and co-developed by Hawai‘i Friends.  Waikiki Youth Circles: Homeless Youth Learn Goal Setting Skills, Walker, Journal of Family Psychotherapy, Vol. 19(1) 2008 is available at:http://www.lorennwalker.com/articles.htm).  

Hawai‘i Friends has received requests from all over the world including New Zealand, Australia, Japan, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Canada, Nepal, Singapore, as well as many American states, for information on its programs.  Please email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it for more information.