The layers of the criminal justice "wedding cake" are the levels of coverage and exposure certain crimes get depending on what the crime is and who committed it. The top layer would be crimes that may not necessarily have been a serious crime (they can be though) but they get a lot of media attention because it may have happened to somebody important or it was just a unique crime. The middle layer has the high profile crimes that will receive lots of news coverage. These are serious crimes and the people will read and look up more info regarding these crimes so they get a decent amount of attention. The largest layer is the third and bottom layer. It is the biggest like the base of a traditional wedding cake and represents all the small scale crimes that make up the majority of our inmates in the prison system. People caught with drug paraphernalia or your everyday common thief who gets caught. These are the crimes that happen everyday but you don't hear about them or hear very little about them because they are so frequent.

An example of the top layer of the cake would be the Michael Jackson case which may be ruled as a homicide now. It happened to a celebrity so it is dominating headlines across the country and murder is a serious crime but it is getting a lot more coverage than if it were an everyday guy who died.

An example of the middle layer of the cake would be this case of a girl who died from parental abuse from her mother's boyfriend. Serious crime from an everyday person and it is getting attention in local Hawaii newspapers. (Burnett, John. 2009. "Girl dies in alleged domestic abuse case". West Hawaii Today. http://www.westhawaiitoday.com/articles/2009/09/07/local/local03.txt )

An example of a bottom layer crime would be someone picked up and jailed for marijuana possession. A pretty much victimless crime and we get another person added to the already overpopulated prison system.

The Hawai'i Department Of Corrections mission statement is "We are committed to providing a safe and healthy environment for staff and offenders." (Hawai'i Department of Corrections. http://hawaii.gov/psd/administration/mission-statement-and-principles/operating-and-people-principles.pdf )

The total justice system expenditure for the state of Hawaii in the year 2006 was $703,075. $278,684 was spent on the police, $245,069 was spent on judicial and legal, and $179,322 was spent on corrections. In most states police takes up a majority of the budget, and Hawaii is no exception, but in Hawaii it is in the same ballpark spending area as judicial and corrections. The reason for this could be that Hawaii is so small and broken up that a smaller police force can stay effective. Not to mention that the emphasis on tourism means at any given time a lot of the population consists of tourists who just want to vacation. It isn't as necessary to have such a large police force which puts totals on par with the other categories. This agency could cut its spending by promoting more neighborhood watch programs since communities are more likely to be close knit on these small islands. They could also cut down on police cars if they have too many as the islands are small. One last idea would be to use more deterrents to prevent crimes.