Hawaiʻi prisons are finally moving forward with an ID program for inmates
A law passed in 2017 required the state to provide convicts with identification upon release to help them manage on the outside.
More than four years after the state legislature passed a law requiring the prison system to issue outgoing inmates with identification cards, corrections officials say they have worked out a system to do so and have ordered the equipment needed to produce the cards.
Members of the Hawaiʻi Correctional Systems Oversight Commission were briefed Thursday on efforts to provide outgoing inmates with IDs, which can be an essential tool as convicts travel, job hunt, seek housing or apply for government benefits.
Lawmakers passed Act 56 in 2017, which supporters hoped would finally end the practice of paroling or releasing prisoners at the end of their sentences with no money, and no identification.
“Obtaining employment and housing are difficult with a criminal record, and those releasing from a period of incarceration need support with their efforts in order to have a realistic opportunity of success,” the Hawaiʻi Appleseed Center for Law & Economic Justice argued at the time.
But the program to provide ID’s stalled for years, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Hawaiʻi cited state data from 2019 that showed more than half of all inmates were still being released without identification.