Hawaii Federal Court Restorative Reentry Circle Pilot Project

In 2015 the United States District Court for the District of Hawaii Pretrial Services Office collaborated with Hawa'ii Friends of Restorative Justice (HFRJ), a small Honolulu non-profit, to provide and measure the outcomes of a reentry planning circle process for incarcerated individuals who were either facing a federal prison sentence or had been sentenced to federal prison. In 2017 the pilot was expanded to individuals on probation under the court's jurisdiction. This article uses a case the authors worked on to examine the reentry planning process and the pilot project.