Client Citations

Of of 41 LEAD clients with available records from 2015 to 2021, 1,332 citations were identified for analysis. The citation records are grouped into 5 categories to analyze the tendency and frequency of citations. The analysis provides 1) the general information of the LEAD HNL client citations and 2) its comparative information between the 2015-2018 and 2019-2022 periods.

The General Analysis of the LEAD HNL Client Citations

The citations have been categorized into five groups with subcategories:

• Public place occupancy

• Traffic violation

• Offenses against property

• Drug/smoking/drinking

• Physical/oral violence against persons

The Hawaii Revisited Statutes and The Revised Ordinances of Honolulu are referred to as the standard of the categorization because the code of the citations is based on those state statutes. However, the common attributes of the citations are also considered across the referred statutes because the analysis is more to identify the violations that the clients should manage within the legal system than to reconstruct the legal system to manage violators.

The Proportion of Categories

Out of 766 citations, 552 are issued for improper residence in the public areas, and 214 are for sit/lie. Separating the places of the improper occupancy into sidewalks, public parks, and others, the clients mostly reside in the public parks and sit/lie on the sidewalks.

In traffic violations, violations against lax pedestrian duty (103 citations), safety (97 citations), and license/plate (85 citations) comprise the majority. The other four sub-categories are relatively less outstanding. In general, clients as pedestrians (non-driving drivers) are the most frequently cited. However, clients as active drivers of bikes or cars also count the large proportion with 97 safety-related citations.

In this category, trespassing on private or prohibited public property takes up 59 citations, followed by theft/robbery and littering with 34 and 8 citations, respectively. Among 59 trespasses, the first-degree trespass takes 12 citations. The remaining 47 citations are for second-degree or simple trespasses.

Dividing citation data into the two periods, 2015-2018, corresponding to a period prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and establishment full implementation of the LEAD program, and 2019-2022. Citation data was divided in to five broad categories.

Among five categories, the proportion of public place occupancy increased dramatically while others decreased or were similar between 2015-2018 and 2019-2022. However, it is noteworthy that the increase in public place occupancy has taken over half of the total number of client citations with 67% between 2019-2022.

Specifically looking into the citations for public place occupancy, the explicit increase of Others can be seen in the improper residence in the later phase. It can be explained by 128 citations for unpermitted structures on sidewalks. The same tendency is indicated in sit/lie, with approximately eight times more citations for sit or lie on the sidewalks.

When separating the citations yearly, the number of citations for public place occupancy skyrockets to 237 (144 for improper residence and 93 sit/lie) in 2020, followed by a decreasing trend from 2018 to 2019. Another interesting observation is that the only group corresponding to this tendency is the negligent pedestrian duty in the traffic violation category. It also decreases from 16 in 2018 to 9 in 2019 and then peaks at 21 in 2020. After the peak in 2020, the figures of the public occupancy and negligent pedestrian duty gradually decrease to 2022, except the rebound of the sit/lie to 48 in 2022.