Meda Chesney-Lind is a US feminist, criminologist, and an advocate for girls and women who come in contact with the criminal justice system in Hawaii.
Chesney-Lind works to find alternatives to women's incarceration and is an advocate for humanitarian solutions within the Hawaiian criminal justice system.
Over much of the past two decades, her focus has been on improvement of the Hawaiian correctional system through producing articles for newspapers, books, and journals, as well as working with community-based agencies and giving talks to local organizations and legislators.
She also received a contract for a three-year pilot project (2003-2004), for which she was granted almost $40,000 to provide evaluation services to the Family Drug Court (first circuit) in the state of Hawaii.
This court intends to address female delinquents with a history of offending on the island of Oahu.