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FBI Adopt-A-School
Program
Reducing Crime, Empowering a Community
All the evidence led to the University of Hawaii’s West Oahu campus, to
a field that appeared to contain a shallow grave. Taking direction from
their FBI mentor, two teams of young investigators began to excavate
the site, using trowels and soft brushes, working methodically until
the freshly exposed earth revealed the outlines of a skull.
For the students from two different high schools, the hands-on dig was
part of a mock kidnapping case they were investigating, and the
culmination of a yearlong introduction to the FBI and the workings of
the criminal justice system. For Special Agent Arnold Laanui, the
exercise capped another successful year for the FBI Honolulu Division’s
Adopt-a-School program—and it reaffirmed his passionate belief that one
of the best ways to reduce crime in at-risk communities is to provide
the right educational opportunities for young people.
Nearly a decade ago, Laanui, one of fewer than 20 Pacific Islanders in
the FBI agent ranks, wanted to bring an Adopt-a-School program to his
home state. The Bureau began the national outreach initiative in 1994
to help young people stay away from crime and drugs while learning core
values that would make them good citizens. Since then, agents and other
FBI employees around the country have volunteered thousands of hours to
make a positive impact on the lives of youngsters in predominantly
disadvantaged neighborhoods.
In 2009, Special Agent Arnold Laanui helped establish the FBI Honolulu
Division’s Adopt-a-School program at Waipahu High School. Since then,
one of the state’s most troubled schools has undergone a renaissance.
To determine which Hawaiian school would be best served, in 2009 Laanui
researched Oahu communities with the highest crime rates. The
neighborhood of Waipahu, encompassing approximately a four-square-mile
area not far from the high-rise resorts and tourist beaches of Waikiki,
showed surprising statistics.
“The data revealed that nearly half of the juvenile criminals in the
state of Hawaii were coming out of that one area,” Laanui said. “That
one little plot of land represented the most crime-ridden neighborhood
in the state.”
Another fact was also of interest: From 2008 to 2010, nearly half the
students at Waipahu High School had failed to graduate on time. Only 52
percent of the students who had entered the school as freshmen during
those years had graduated four years later. Did the other 48 percent,
having dropped out, resort to criminal activity because there were few
other options? If you could design a program to keep those youngsters
in school, engaged, and graduating on time, wouldn’t that result in
lowering the community’s crime rate?
Laanui had his school—“in the toughest neighborhood in Hawaii”—and a
clear vision: “From the start,” he said, “the Adopt-a-School program
was a very deliberate attempt to re-engineer an entire neighborhood
really at its core.”
The FBI's Honolulu Division implemented its Adopt-a-School program
nearly a decade ago at what was then an at-risk high school in troubled
neighborhood. Today, the program is showing tangible, measurable
results that show lower rates of drug use and truancy at the school.
Transcript | Download
Waipahu High School was full of energy on a recent spring morning as
young people made their way to and from class. Motivational
words—Ambition, Courage, Perseverance—appear on stairwells, and
students’ murals grace many of the walls. Today, the school is a safe
place for young people to learn and explore, but that was not always
the case...
Read the rest of the article at FBI.gov
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