Image Credit: Julian Armstrong

To read more of Annabelle Le Jeune's article, please click here.

A young Native Hawaiian farmer shows up to work every day to cultivate indigenous crops using traditional and contemporary methods to feed his island home community. The best part of going to work, he says, is the view. Each day, he farms within the embrace of the Olomana mountain peak’s undulating, lush ridge. Sitting between the farm where he works and the view that he loves is the Hawaiʻi Youth Correctional Facility.

Machijah Perez-Fonseca is one of hundreds of young people who set foot on the 500-acre property known as the Kawailoa Youth and Family Wellness Center. When youth here gaze at the land where their ancestors once walked, not all see the view through the same lens. While Machijah’s mountain view is from the center’s farm, some youth see it from behind the prison’s barbed wire. Others see it from a shelter bed.

Machijah was one of those young people, once. Not long before becoming a full-time farmer, Machijah stayed at the shelter for unhoused youth, steps away from the farm. His move from the shelter to the farm—and how it changed his life and perspective—is part of a broader effort to end youth incarceration in Hawaiʻi.

To date, the collective advocacy work of local community leaders, the State of Hawaiʻi, and national experts have reduced the state’s youth incarceration rate by 82 percent. Now, the State of Hawaiʻi is working toward a 100 percent reduction—but it’s not an easy task.

Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders are overrepresented at every stage in the juvenile justice system. Due to historical trauma that predates the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom, Indigenous people are more likely to experience poverty than their nonindigenous neighbors—and in their own homelands.