ID Processing is a Scam — And It’s Dangerous

Not quite on par with mandated COVID vaccines, but dangerously close.

Just Another Government Scam

In Hawaii’s criminal justice system, there’s a quiet but dangerous redundancy that nobody seems willing to fix: ID processing after a grand jury indictment.

When a case transfers from District Court to Circuit Court via grand jury indictment, a new bench warrant is automatically generated. In many cases, the bail already posted in District Court simply transfers over.

Yet—whether by active instruction or passive acceptance—the judiciary encourages law enforcement to serve these new warrants as if the defendant had missed court. Officers often fast-track serving these warrants even though the person is already out on bail for the same criminal matter. It’s an unnecessary step, and worse, it’s dangerous.

"ID Processing" is Just an Arrest in Disguise

Some try to dress this up by calling it “ID processing.” That’s just a rebranding trick to make something unacceptable sound harmless.

If you have to:

Self-surrender to a sheriff or police station
Be physically taken into custody
Get booked and processed
And, in rare cases, post a second bond

…then by every definition, you’ve been arrested. “ID processing” isn’t some harmless clerical update—it’s an arrest, plain and simple.

Why It’s Dangerous

I’ve had clients nearly come to blows—verbally definitely, physically almost—with officers serving these unnecessary warrants.

Picture this: a family on the West Side has just scraped together every last dollar to bail out their loved one. Days later, police show up at their door to “serve a warrant” for the same case. The family knows bail was posted. They think law enforcement is making a mistake. The tension builds.

It’s a recipe for a deadly misunderstanding.

Fudging the Crime Numbers

When someone is booked twice for the same criminal matter, it artificially inflates crime statistics.

It creates the illusion of more crime and more arrests than actually exist. This misleads:

City councilmembers, who make budget decisions based on faulty stats
The public, who think crime is climbing
Law enforcement leadership, who misallocate already limited resources

HPD isn’t improving public safety by arresting the same person twice for the same case. It’s an empty calorie stat—looks like work, but feeds nothing.

An Argument for Attorneys

Defense attorneys can—and should—challenge this. In open court at A&P, a clever trick I’ve seen work, is to ask the administrative judge to stay the “ID processing” request, so that the issue may be taken up with the trial judge.

If you can push the “ID processing” requirement down the road, it almost always falls through the cracks and is never mentioned again — for two reasons:

1. The new prosecutor assigned to the trial judge often has no idea the ID processing step was ever in question.
2. If no one brings it up again, and since the processing was never actually required to proceed, the case simply moves on.

Just as I saw with superseding indictments after the Obrerodecision and with COVID-era grand jury indictments, “ID processing” was routinely skipped — so long as the court doesn’t not specifically order it, no ID processing is required. If the warrant is recalled, there is no need or further justification for a second booking, so long as a defensive attorney has the heart and backbone to object.

A Waste of Law Enforcement Resources

HPD already suffers from historically high vacancy rates. The judiciary’s insistence on redundant bookings wastes officer time and pulls them away from real public safety work.

It’s only a matter of time before this inefficiency leads to a wrongful death or serious injury—and the legal liability will be enormous.

The Bottom Line

Bail is binary. You’re either on bail or you’re not—just like you’re either pregnant or you’re not.

Forcing a second booking on someone already on bail is illogical. Rebranding it as “ID processing” is wordplay that masks a dangerous and unnecessary practice.

It needs to stop. And it should have been stopped years ago.

- JAIL MAIL NICK