In Hawaiʻi, we like to believe we see our children fully, not only for what they’ve done, but for what they’ve lived through, and what they can still become.

That’s why, years ago, I was proud to sponsor legislation to end life-without-parole sentences for young people. And it’s why I later joined an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court urging our courts to recognize what decades of research and lived experience have made undeniable: children are different.

But ending one extreme sentence is not the finish line. Hawaiʻi still has people serving very long adult sentences for crimes committed as kids, sentences often imposed without a meaningful, trauma-informed accounting of what shaped that child’s behavior, decision-making, and capacity for change.

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This legislative session, lawmakers have an opportunity to take the next step toward a smarter, more humane system by advancing Senate Bill 2325 and Senate Bill 2108.

These bills come at a moment when we can no longer pretend the “adult system” is equipped to respond to childhood trauma.

A recent national report by Human Rights for Kids: “The Childhood Trauma-to-Prison Pipeline,” draws a direct line between severe childhood trauma and adult prosecution. Researchers mailed surveys to 19,840 people across 38 states who were incarcerated in adult facilities for crimes connected to their childhoods; 2,220 people responded. Hawaiʻi was included.

Hawaiʻi’s inclusion is a warning light: even here, people are serving adult time for childhood conduct, and we should be asking whether our laws ensure sentencing reflects what we know about youth trauma and development.

Nationally, the answers are devastating. More than 80% of respondents reported being held with adults while still children, and 78.62% reported solitary confinement, with an average longest stay of 10 months.

That is not rehabilitation. It is harm layered on top of harm.

This is what “adult time for kids” looks like: isolation, exposure to adult violence, and responses that can deepen trauma rather than treat it. If our goal is public safety, we should be building systems that reduce future harm. Trauma-informed practice is evidence-based prevention.

That is where SB 2108 and SB 2325 matter.

SB 2108 strengthens how courts decide whether a young person should be transferred into adult criminal court, updating the waiver factors judges must weigh so youth status is taken seriously at the front end — where a single decision can permanently alter a child’s life.

SB 2325 creates a careful “second look” for certain adult sentences imposed for conduct committed before age 18, allowing a judge to modify a sentence when specific criteria are met, the person is found not to be a danger, and a reduction serves the interests of justice.

That matters because no one should be defined forever by the worst thing they did as a child — especially when the original sentence failed to fully account for trauma, adolescent development, coercion or exploitation, and other adverse childhood experiences.

Taken together, these bills would help Hawaiʻi do what too few states do: make youth sentencing decisions that reflect both accountability and human development.

Here’s what a trauma-informed youth sentencing framework should consistently include:

• A real accounting of childhood trauma and victimization, and how it shaped behavior, judgment, and survival strategies.
• Developmentally appropriate decision-making that recognizes adolescents’ heightened impulsivity, susceptibility to pressure, and capacity for growth.
• Access to counsel and qualified evaluations so courts are not making life-altering decisions with partial information.
• A meaningful second look after years of demonstrated growth, not as a guarantee of release, but as a safeguard against condemning a child to a lifetime without hope. 


Hawaiʻi has already shown leadership by rejecting the most extreme punishments for children. Now we must ensure the rest of our youth sentencing system is not quietly extreme in a different way, imposing decades-long adult sentences without fully grappling with trauma, adolescence, and change.

The Human Rights for Kids findings should shake us: widespread adult incarceration of children, exposing them to serious harm, including abuse, long before they are old enough to vote, sign a contract, or fully understand the lifelong consequences of adult court.

If we believe children are capable of rehabilitation, and we should, then our laws must be structured to recognize it. I am urging lawmakers to move SB2108 and SB2325 forward.

Hawaiʻi can be trauma-informed in more than name. We can build a youth justice approach that protects public safety while refusing to treat childhood trauma as irrelevant and refusing to treat children as disposable.