Testimony in Support of HB 2413: “Relating to Pretrial Reform.”
Testimony from:
Lisel Petis, Policy Director, R Street Institute
Testimony in Support of HB 2413: “Relating to Pretrial Reform.”
February 19, 2026
Hawai’i House Judiciary and Hawaiian Affairs Committee
Chairman Tarnas and members of the committee,
My name is Lisel Petis, and I am the policy director of criminal justice and civil liberties at the R Street Institute, a nonprofit, nonpartisan public policy research organization. R Street engages in policy research and analysis dedicated to common sense solutions that make government work smarter and more effectively. Given our commitment to pragmatic policies that improve fairness, public safety, and government accountability, we have a strong interest in House Bill 2413.[1]
Pretrial policy must balance two compelling interests. The first is protecting public safety and ensuring people return to court.[2] The second is upholding constitutional rights, including the presumption of innocence, due process, and protection against excessive bail.[3] Hawai’i’s current overreliance on cash bail does not consistently uphold those goals. Over time, cash bail has become a stand in for risk, setting a price to obtain freedom. In practice, that means low-risk people may remain detained simply because of an inability to pay, while allowing quick release of people with greater means, even when they face more serious charges. This simply does not promote safety or fairness in pretrial detention.
H.B. 2413 is not an elimination of cash bail and it does not remove judicial discretion. Instead, it creates a presumption of release for nonviolent, low-risk defendants and prioritizes the use of nonmonetary conditions when needed. Failure to appear remains an offense, and judges retain full authority to respond to violations. For serious offenses—such as violent crimes or sexual assault—as well as high-risk defendants, cash bail and existing preventive detention laws remain in place.
Maintaining the status quo of jailing low-risk people for non-violent crimes before trial is both costly and inefficient for Hawaiʻi. Housing one person in custody can cost the state more than $300 per day, while pretrial supervision and other noncustodial options are typically far less expensive.[4] Reducing reliance on unnecessary pretrial detention can free up scarce state resources for higher-priority public safety needs and services that strengthen community stability. Hawaiʻi’s jails are increasingly being asked to manage problems they were never designed to solve. State reporting indicates that nearly 40 percent of people incarcerated in Hawaiʻi’s correctional facilities were homeless prior to incarceration.[5] Using jail as a stand-in housing system is among the most expensive, and least effective, responses to homelessness.
There is also a cost to the individuals detained. In many low-level cases, people spend a night or a few days in jail only to be released with “time served,” absorbing the harms of incarceration—missed medications, lost housing or jobs, interrupted appointments, and broken communication—without any meaningful chance to connect to services to remedy the behavior underlying their criminality.[6]
H.B. 2413 is a measured way to realign the system with what it is intended to do, reserving beds and staff attention for higher-risk cases, while allowing limited dollars to be redirected toward housing stability and behavioral health supports in the community.
Research shows that cash bail does not reliably produce better pretrial outcomes.[7] Moreover, many people do not post bail themselves, and instead pay a nonrefundable fee to a commercial bail bond agent.[8] This results in a fee lost regardless of whether the person appears in court which limits the practical incentive that cash bail is assumed to create.
I urge the committee to support House Bill 2413 and take a critical step toward a more just and effective pretrial system. Thank you for your time and consideration.
Thank you,
Lisel Petis
Policy Director
R Street Institute
lpetis@rstreet.org
[1] Hawaii House Bill 2413. https://www.capitol.hawaii.gov/session/measure_indiv.aspx?billtype=HB&billnumber=2413&year=2026.
[2] “Modern Doctrine on Bail,” Constitution Annotated, last accessed Feb. 18, 2026. https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt8-2-2.
[3] “Presumption of Innocence,” Legal Information Institute, last accessed Feb. 18, 2026. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/presumption_of_innocence; “Due Process,” Cornell Law School, last accessed Feb. 18, 2026. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/due_process.
[4] Sergio Alcubilla, “Reimagining Public Safety Coalition Delivers Community Petition Urging Governor Green to Veto Money for New Super Jail,” ACLU Hawaii, June 5, 2025. https://www.acluhi.org/press-releases/reimagining-public-safety-coalition-delivers-community-petition-urging-governor-green/.
[5] Sarah Staudt, “RE: O‘ahu Community Correctional Center jail expansion plans and population forecast report,” Prison Policy Initiative, Feb. 19, 2025. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/PPI_OCCC_Memo.pdf.
[6] Kimberly Kessler Ferzan, “The Trouble with Time Served,” BYU Law Review 48:7 (Summer 2023). https://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3452&context=lawreview.
[7] Aurélie Ouss and Megan Stevenson, “Does Cash Bail Deter Misconduct?” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 15:3 (July 2023). https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257%2Fapp.20210349.
[8] Wendy Sawyer, “All profit, no risk: How the bail industry exploits the legal system,” Prison Policy Initiative, October 2022. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/bail.html.