Half of Hawaii inmates leave prison without the IDs they need to start over
Simoné Nanilei Kamaunu left prison in 2022 with a $500 check and no way to cash it.
She’d lost her social security card before she was locked up, her driving permit had expired and her prison identification card didn’t count for anything outside of the Women’s Community Correctional Center. Without a state ID, she couldn’t open a bank account to deposit the money she had gotten from a nonprofit for completing her GED while incarcerated for a parole violation.
“It’s been super hard because I’ve gotten out with nothing, no social security card, no nothing,” she said. “I had to hit the ground running and hustle myself.”
The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is supposed to help incarcerated people obtain identification. But more than seven years after the state Legislature passed a law requiring that it do so, the number of people leaving prisons with the documents they need to function in society has barely budged.
Almost half of people released from Hawaiʻi’s state prisons between November 2023 and October 2024 did not have a valid state ID, according to data the corrections department reported to the Legislature. About 95% of people released from jail during that same period did not have one.
Tommy Johnson, the department’s director, says the inmates are partly to blame.
“It’s not from our lack of trying; you can’t make them fill out the documents for a card,” Johnson told Civil Beat. “A lot of the folks don’t want to provide that information to us.”
Johnson also noted that the numbers may be inaccurate because people might not have had their IDs with them when they were arrested, and those documents are being held for them by someone on the outside. He also cited challenges coordinating with other government agencies and obtaining the equipment necessary to collect inmates’ photos and signatures for their IDs.
It took Kamaunu about three months after her release to get the identification she needed to cash her $500 check, just in time to buy Christmas presents for her baby.
“The prison system,” said Kamaunu, “is setting us up to fail.”
Little Progress In More Than 7 Years
The slow implementation of the law means that every year hundreds of people are being released without the identification they need to find work, secure housing or open a bank account.
More than a dozen states have laws requiring corrections agencies to help inmates obtain identification prior to release. Hawaiʻi’s 2017 law requires the corrections department to inform people in prisons and jails that they can receive help getting identification documents while behind bars, including a state ID, birth certificate and social security card.
Corrections staff ask during intake and assessment whether they would like that assistance, Johnson said.
But implementation has been full of false starts, stymied by slow-moving conversations between government agencies and a drawn-out process to acquire equipment. It took several years for the corrections department to set up a game plan and sign the necessary agreements with the Department of Transportation, the Department of Customer Service and the Social Security Administration, said Johnson.
Hawaiʻi requires that people apply in person for a driver’s license or state ID — and that’s a big problem for prisoners. It wasn’t until June 2022 — more than four years after the law went into effect — that Halawa Correctional Facility became the first prison to process inmates’ applications for state IDs with a machine on site.
In the first year and a half after that machine was installed, the department helped 150 people get IDs, according to a report that the corrections department sent to the Legislature in December 2023. Since then, the agency also has released more than 750 people from all the state prisons without one, according to data that the department sent to lawmakers in 2023 and 2024.
In 2022, the Legislature appropriated $100,000 to put ID machines in four other correctional facilities. So far, none have been purchased. Inmates at prisons other than Halawa Correctional Facility can’t get their IDs until they are released or go on furlough, at which point they can leave the facility to go to a DMV appointment.
Johnson said the department hasn’t been able to buy the machines for the past few years because it had to wait for The Department of Customer Services’ Division of Motor Vehicles to upgrade its system.
“The satellite machines we purchase have to be the exact same with the same specifications as the city and county so the machines can talk to each other for processing ID cards,” he said.
Until then, Johnson said the department is helping people get other documents like a birth certificate or social security card, which they’ll need to apply for an ID once they’re released.
But there’s been a delay in getting people social security cards too. More than half of the people who left prisons between November 2022 and October 2024 didn’t have one, according to data presented to the Legislature.
It wasn’t until early last year that the corrections department signed an agreement with the Social Security Administration to help incarcerated people get social security cards. Johnson attributed the slow process to “hiccups” dealing with the federal agency that lasted two and a half years. The local office was closed during the pandemic and faced a long backlog of work when it reopened, allowing inmates to start getting cards last fall.
Proposed Law Would Start Process Earlier
Tsofit Ohayon entered the Women’s Community Corrections Center with nothing — no driver’s license, no social security card, no documents to prove that, despite being born in Israel, she’s an American citizen.
Ohayon knew it would be complicated to get those documents, and she soon realized she wasn’t going to get enough help while she was incarcerated for credit card theft and related charges in 2020.
Despite her best efforts, she wasn’t able to get her proof of citizenship until she was on furlough.
That set back her timeline for getting other documents that she needed. She wanted to tutor students in math at the community college where she’s now getting an engineering degree. But until she got her ID, she wasn’t able to work.
“I was very irritated because I knew that I was going to come out exactly in the same predicament as I went in,” said Ohayon. “I’m going to have to figure out a way to move mountains to get these people to do anything.”
Johnson said that part of the reason people leave prison without an ID card is because it takes a long time to get all the necessary supporting documents, like a birth certificate or social security card, especially if they’re starting from scratch.
“This process takes months and months,” he said. That means some people start applications while in prison but don’t actually get their IDs until they leave.
A proposed bill in the Legislature is meant to address that problem. Senate Bill 224 — introduced by 10 lawmakers including Senators Brandon Elefante, Henry Aquino and Stanley Chang — would launch the process of getting vital documents earlier in a person’s incarceration.
The current law requires the agency to start the application when someone is a year or less out from their release. Senate Bill 224 requires that the department begin working on obtaining inmates’ identification as soon as possible.
The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation supports the legislation, but Johnson said his staff is already doing this in the state prisons. However, he said starting earlier in jails won’t make much of a difference, since most people are there for weeks, rather than years. That isn’t sufficient time, according to Johnson.
“It’s a really tough nut to crack to try to get them ID cards,” he said. “There’s very little we can do with respect to trying to get it. We can get the application in, and then we need a forwarding address where to send the document when it comes in.”
For people who have been incarcerated, the situation remains frustrating.
“Why even pass a law if you guys aren’t following it?” said Kamaunu. “You expect us to have integrity and be on it, but … what kind of example are you leading by?”
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This story was originally published by Honolulu Civil Beat and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.