By ACLU of Hawai‘i Policy Director Mandy Fernandes, for Star Advertiser
Published: Apr. 27, 2026
On April 14, 16 state senators voted no on House Bill 2413, in doing so preserving a system where freedom before trial depends not on whether a person is dangerous or whether they’ll return to court, but whether they can buy their way out of jail.
This wasn’t a close call on the merits. HB 2413 only provided cashless conditions of release for low-level, nonviolent offenses, explicitly excluding assault, sexual offenses, domestic violence, DUIs, stalking, and terroristic threatening. Judges kept full authority to detain anyone who posed a genuine threat or was likely to flee.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that being stuck in jail pretrial should be the “carefully limited exception,” and this bill would merely stop Hawaii from jailing people simply because they are poor.
A recent New York Times interview traced how bail reform — once a rare bipartisan consensus — became a national scapegoat after pandemic-era crime spikes, despite the evidence never supporting the blame. Hawaii just joined that chorus.
As a survivor and advocate, I’ve learned that our criminal legal system fails us all. One camp says it’s too lenient, the other says it’s too harsh, but almost nobody thinks it’s actually keeping us safe. Instead of arguing with each other, we should interrogate the system itself.
Crimes are prosecuted as offenses against the state, not against you. As a victim, once you give your statement, your story is no longer yours. Your credibility, your past, sometimes your body — all becomes evidence. Your worth rests not on how you were harmed or what would restore you, but on how convincing you are as a witness.
Even if you decide you don’t want to proceed, prosecutors are not obligated to drop the case. It’s no wonder so many survivors choose not to report. The process inflicts a second trauma.
If you’re accused, you have even less control. You get arrested — maybe not knowing what for — and the police set your bail based on a chart: $500, $10,000, $1 million, etc. You don’t have the cash so you spend the night in jail. You pay for phone calls. You get one hour outside your cell daily — that is, if there are enough correctional officers to supervise.
Eventually, you get maybe five minutes with the judge, who declines to reduce your bail. You stay in jail and miss work, rent payments and school pickups. You lose your job, home and custody of your kids.
Research shows this happens too often. In many low-level cases, the process becomes the punishment, resulting in disrupted lives without meaningful accountability. True accountability is an active process of being heard, making repair, but our carceral system doesn’t provide for this. You endure your sentence, maybe plead out. You’re left traumatized. That’s not accountability.
The context here, of course, is that Hawaii sends roughly a quarter of our incarcerated population to Saguaro Correctional Center in Arizona, a private prison run by CoreCivic. Now the state is preparing to procure a roughly billion-dollar public-private partnership to build a new Oahu jail, and CoreCivic has publicly expressed interest in the contract. The state official that shaped the project’s financing plan is a former CoreCivic lobbyist. The same company that profits from exiling our people and reaps hundreds of millions from ICE detention contracts riddled with documented abuses, is first in line to build Hawaii’s next jail.
Blocking bail reform means more bodies to fill this jail, and companies like CoreCivic are laughing all the way to the bank. Our communities deserve a system that actually makes us safer. HB 2413 was a modest step. Sixteen senators disagreed. The work continues.