State and local governments in island communities face a research problem that their mainland counterparts do not. When a continental state government needs independent research on law enforcement workforce policy, emergency management frameworks, or juvenile justice reform, it can choose from dozens of regional universities, policy institutes, and research centers that have studied comparable jurisdictions in comparable operating environments.
When Hawaii's state government, Guam's Office of Civil Defense, or the Government of the U.S. Virgin Islands needs independent research on the same topics, its choices narrow dramatically. The academic institutions available to island governments have never studied island-specific implementation constraints. The policy institutes available to them were built for continental policy environments. The research they produce is built on data that does not include island communities.
ISPI was built to solve this problem. It is a research institution dedicated to public safety and security policy for island and coastal communities — producing practitioner-grounded research that state and local governments in island environments can actually implement.
Hawaii state and county government commission priorities
Hawaii's most urgent commissioned research needs are in three areas. The law enforcement workforce crisis — with the Honolulu Police Department operating at approximately 80 percent of authorized strength — requires independent research that goes beyond recruitment marketing to address the structural compensation-cost-of-living gap that drives retention failure. ISPI's law enforcement workforce research provides the evidence base.
Emergency management framework adequacy following the August 2023 Lahaina wildfire requires independent assessment of whether Hawaii's county emergency management plans are built on island-reality assumptions or continental templates. ISPI's Island Emergency Management Framework and Maui Wildfire Analysis provide the research foundation.
Juvenile justice reform for Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander youth — where decades of documented overrepresentation in Hawaii's Family Court system has produced no sustained policy response — requires independent research that accounts for the cultural, geographic, and community-specific factors that continental juvenile justice research does not address. ISPI's at-risk youth research covers this gap directly.
Hawaii state agencies, county governments, and territorial administrations across the Pacific are invited to contact ISPI to discuss commissioned research engagements. ISPI is a Hawaii nonprofit and SAM.gov registered federal contractor. Contact: ISPIGlobal@proton.me.
