HONOLULU (KHON2) -- According to police data, the number of juveniles arrested for breaking the law has gone up, but the number of youths behind bars has dropped down. Data shows that juveniles are getting arrested for a wide away of crimes, from theft to rape to murder. The executive director of the state's Office of Youth Services Leanne Gillespie says that this troubling trend is evidence of a much larger problem. Teenager arrested in connection to Lanakila shooting "These are the behaviors, they don't necessarily define our youth," she said. "A lot of these kids, if not all of them, have trauma in their background." Gillespie and her office work with at-risk youth to get them the support that they need, and Gillespie says that the program is working, as fewer juveniles have been admitted to the Hawaiʻi Youth Correctional Facility. "Last year our intake number was 33. This year it is down to 27. And over the last 20 years, with juvenile justice reform, we have seen an 86 reduction to youth admissions to HYCF," Gillespie said. Get Hawaii's latest morning news delivered to your inbox, sign up for News 2 You HYCF tries to reach the juveniles during their first offense, which is usually a minor violation. "We have programs to divert them at that point early on, before they get deeper into the system," Gillespie said. Victor Bakke, the attorney who represented a 17-year-old accused of murder, says that children can turn their lives around with proper support. Find more Hawaii, Oahu, Maui and Kauai news here "Most of the people in the juvenile and adult system are more on the side of just bad judgement, bad spot, maybe a bad time in their life," Bakke said. "But they should not be defined by their one bad act." ...read more read less