GLOGood Lookin’ Out

Hawaii regulations: details

Copied from the PDF copies of their chapters that Hawaii’s departments post on their own rules pages on October 19, 2026 (Release 1) and November 1, 2026 (Release 2). Check the official page before you rely on a rule.

What is here

Release 1: 2,257 sections of the Hawaii Administrative Rules, read by us from the PDF copies of their chapters that Hawaii’s departments post on their own rules pages, reached from the Lieutenant Governor’s administrative-rules pages. We copied the files on October 19, 2026. Each section comes back as its file prints it, with its source note (its dates and its Auth and Imp lines). A rule changed after we copied it is not reflected here.
Release 2: 37 sections of Title 23, from the two files Hawaii’s Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation posts on its own site (dcr.hawaii.gov), which we saved on November 1, 2026: 17 sections of the corrections chapters 23-2 to 23-201 and 20 of chapter 23-700, the Hawaii Paroling Authority’s rules. Those files are page scans. An AI model wrote out each page from its picture and a second model checked every page against it; a section is shown only when every page it is on passed that check. No person read every page against the picture, so a word can be misread. 15 sections had a stamped effective date the first reading could not make out; we read it again from the page picture, and each of those sections says so. 80 other units of these two files are held by number with their reasons, mainly a page that did not pass the check (75).
Most of Hawaii’s rules are not shown. The Legislative Reference Bureau’s 2025 directory lists 985 chapters in force. We show sections from 177 of them. 465 were not found as files on the department pages we read (two department sites refused our requests), and the other 343 are held.
Of the 12,312 sections we read, 10,055 are held and not shown, along with 2,691 other entries such as reserved or repealed sections and lines of a chapter’s section list. Each is held by number with its reasons: mainly scanned files or machine-read (OCR) text (5,510), files printing later amendments not compiled into the chapter (4,482), files whose source notes leave the effective date blank (3,960). A held section comes back as held, with its reasons and no text. Held is not absent.
These are the departments’ copies, and many are printed “UNOFFICIAL”. They are not the official Hawaii Administrative Rules: check with the department and the filed rule before relying on a section.
Look a section up by its number, as in 16-185-101, HAR § 16-185-101 or Haw. Admin. R. § 16-185-101. A long section comes back in pages, and nothing is cut. A chapter such as HAR chapter 16-185 lists its sections: shown and held.

How we checked it

Two separate readers, written with no shared code, read every file: one from the PDF’s text lines, one from its words and their positions. A section is shown only where both agree on its number, caption, every word of its text and its source note.
A section is held when its file is a scan or machine-read text, when its file prints later amendments not compiled into the chapter, when its source note leaves the effective date blank, when it prints words in square brackets or the file prints the amendment form, when only one reader found it or the two differ, when its chapter is repealed or not listed in force in the Legislative Reference Bureau’s directory, or when the same number reads clear in two files.
Before release, we read 30 shown sections drawn at random against the PDF page itself. 29 matched. The 30th came from an adoption copy with its effective date left blank; every file like it is now held, and a second draw of 10 matched 10 of 10.
One AI system wrote the readers, ran every check and made every reading and ruling, with no second reader.
For Release 2, separate AI typists wrote out 20 pages drawn at random from the two files’ page pictures, and their words were compared one by one with the model’s reading: none differed. That measures the reading; it does not prove every page right. We found one misread word on a page that had passed, in a section we hold.

What it can't tell you

Whether a rule is in force, valid or current, or is good law.
Whether a department’s copy matches the rule as filed.
Whether anything changed after we copied the files on October 19, 2026 (Release 1) or November 1, 2026 (Release 2).
What the held sections and the chapters not found say.

Known gaps

Only 2,257 sections, from 177 of the 985 chapters in force, are shown in Release 1, and 37 sections of Title 23 in Release 2.
Release 2’s text is a machine reading of page scans: a word can be misread, a hyphen at the end of a line is kept, and each section’s history prints inside its text.
Underlined words, which Hawaii’s amendment copies use to mark added words, cannot be seen in the text. Files printed in the amendment form are held, but a single underlined word left in a compiled chapter would show as plain text.
Line breaks are the PDF’s printed lines; bold, italic type, indentation, tables and pictures are not shown.
Keyword search reads only the shown sections. Held sections and chapters not found have no text here and never match, so most of the rules are outside search.

Notes you may see on an entry

A held section: “GLO holds this section and does not show its text, because its two readers or the release check did not clear it. Its reasons are listed by name.”
A section printed in two files: “This section number also prints in another file GLO read, and that copy is held. The text shown is the copy in url; GLO does not say which copy is current.”
A Release 2 section: “Machine-read from the department’s page scan by a model and checked by a second model; no person read this page against the picture. Check the page before relying on it.”
A stamped date read again: “corrected by GLO: stamp re-read from the page image”
A section not in this copy: “Not in this copy of the Hawaii Administrative Rules, neither shown nor held. That never means the rule does not exist.”

Nothing here is legal advice or a judgment that a rule is in force. Full counts for software: the defect_floor field on every Hawaii result (source=hi).