Every state in this series has something that makes its version of incarceration distinct. Alaska has its geography. California has its scale. Delaware has its smallness. Hawaii has the ocean.
Roughly 800 people convicted in Hawaii's courts are held at Saguaro Correctional Center in Eloy, Arizona, a private prison operated by CoreCivic in the Sonoran Desert. That is approximately one quarter of Hawaii's entire incarcerated population, housed not in another county or another part of the state but across the Pacific Ocean, in a different time zone, in a landscape that could not be more different from the islands the families live on. This practice began in 1995 as a temporary measure to relieve overcrowding at Halawa Correctional Facility on Oahu, where the only medium-security men's prison in the state was designed to hold 496 people and has recently held more than 800. Thirty years later, the pipeline is still running.
I went into the federal system. I went in when my kids were 9, 11, 12, 15, 18, and 20. I know what it means to be separated from your children by distance that was not of your choosing. What Hawaii families separated by the Pacific from a parent in an Arizona desert are navigating is a version of that experience so extreme that it demands its own frame.
What the ocean does to a family
For a family in Honolulu with a parent at Saguaro in Eloy, Arizona, an in-person visit does not mean a drive. It means a flight from Honolulu to Phoenix, which takes about six hours, and then a drive into the desert south of Phoenix to a facility that sits in a town most Arizonans have never heard of. For a family with limited financial resources, which describes a significant portion of the families connected to Hawaii's incarcerated population, that flight is not a routine option. It is a major financial event that may happen once a year, or less.
What this means for children is the near-complete replacement of in-person contact with remote contact. The phone call, the letter, video visitation, become not supplements to visits but the entirety of the parent-child relationship for extended periods. And unlike Alaska, where remoteness is a function of terrain, Hawaii's remoteness is political. The state sent those 800 people to Arizona because its facilities were overcrowded. State lawmakers are now actively pushing to reduce or end the practice, but as of this writing, the pipeline continues.
For a child in Honolulu whose parent is at Saguaro, the parent is not just away. They are on the other side of an ocean, in a desert, in a private prison that Hawaii pays a corporation to operate. That is a complicated thing for a child to hold, at any age.
The Native Hawaiian dimension
Forty percent of Hawaii's incarcerated population is Native Hawaiian, a community that represents roughly 21 percent of the state's population. The disparity is significant and well-documented. It reflects systemic inequities that are beyond the scope of what a parent reading this from inside a DCR facility can change from a cell. What it means for this article is that many of the children most affected by Hawaii's incarceration system are Native Hawaiian children, growing up in a culture with deep connections to land, to ocean, to place, and watching a parent be held in a corporation's desert facility in Arizona.
The separation from land is not abstract in Hawaiian culture. It is felt. A parent at Saguaro who can no longer see the ocean, who is surrounded by Sonoran desert, who is cut off from the cultural and family fabric of island life, is experiencing a form of dislocation that has no equivalent in other states. The child at home, who knows their parent is in a place that looks nothing like anything they know, carries that knowledge.
What both parents can do with this is still the same thing both parents can do everywhere. Protect the children. Keep the channel open. Use every contact as if it is the one that matters, because it might be.
The decision both parents make across the Pacific
My wife never said a word against me to our six children during 66 months. She had six kids in a situation I had created. She chose to keep that from them and let them love me without penalty. That choice is what I have with my adult children now.
The parent at Saguaro, or at Halawa, or at Waiawa, or at Kulani on the Big Island, carries the same obligation. The phone call across the Pacific costs money; GTL is the provider for the Hawaii system and calls are subject to rate caps following the FCC order of April 2026. Whatever the call costs, the question is what the parent does with the minutes they have. A call from Eloy, Arizona to Honolulu that opens with genuine curiosity about the child's specific life, that responds to what the child actually says, that ends with something the child carries with them, is building a relationship across 2,500 miles of ocean. A call that drifts, or presses, or turns into conflict is spending the only contact the child gets on something that pushes them away.
Neither parent can afford to use the children as the battlefield for what the adults are living through. The geographic distance in Hawaii makes the relational distance that much harder to repair once it opens. Both parents have to protect the children from the worst of it.
What the ages mean when an ocean is between the family
My children were 9, 11, 12, 15, 18, and 20 when I went in.
The 9-year-old in Hawaii whose parent is at Saguaro does not understand what Arizona is or why it matters. They understand that their parent is very far away, further than anyone else's parent they know, and that they cannot go there easily. What they need, before any other thing, is to hear from the parent directly and often that none of this is their fault. Children under 10 create private explanations for absence. The explanation they reach most often is that they caused it. That belief does not surface in obvious ways. It settles in quietly while the adults assume the child is managing fine. The distance makes that settling harder to correct because the parent cannot be there to see it happening. Say it on every call: this is not your fault. I love you. I am coming home.
The 11 and 12-year-old in Hawaii is navigating middle school in a place where Hawaiian culture, community, and identity are deeply woven into daily life. A Native Hawaiian 12-year-old navigating middle school with a parent at a mainland facility is doing identity formation work in a culture that emphasizes connection to family, to place, and to ancestry, while one of the primary anchors of that identity is absent and far away. What the incarcerated parent can do across the distance is what every incarcerated parent can do: track the child's specific life. Ask what is happening. Remember what the child said last time. Ask about it this time by name. That continuity of attention is how a parent stays real to a child they cannot reach.
The 15-year-old has spent years watching the outside parent manage an impossible situation. By the time they are 15, they know what the sacrifice looks like. They are evaluating whether the incarcerated parent is worth the effort of the relationship. Do not lecture. Do not instruct. Listen. Ask questions that show genuine interest in who this specific teenager is becoming. The 15-year-old who still answers the call from Eloy or Aiea at the end of the sentence is the one who believed the parent on the other end was real.
The 18 and 20-year-old is an adult making a choice. Respect it. Show up as someone worth choosing.
What the outside parent carries in Hawaii
The outside parent in Hawaii is managing a household on an island where the cost of living is among the highest in the country, children who are missing a parent, and the particular emotional weight of knowing that parent is on the other side of an ocean in a corporate desert facility. They may not have been able to visit in a year. They are the sole point of stability for children who are asking questions the outside parent does not always have good answers for.
What the outside parent needs from the incarcerated parent is acknowledgment. One message, one sentence on a call, that names what they see the outside parent carrying and says thank you, is one of the most stabilizing things an incarcerated parent in Hawaii can offer. My wife deserved to hear that every single day of those 66 months. I said it as often as the access allowed.
For the outside parent: the children need to be able to love both their parents. What you say about the parent who is gone, across the weeks and months of silence and expensive calls, shapes who those children become and what relationship they can eventually have with the incarcerated parent. Protect that. My wife did. It is the reason I have what I have now.
How communication works in Hawaii
Hawaii-side facilities use GTL for phone services. Calls are subject to FCC rate caps effective April 2026. Inmates at Saguaro Correctional Center in Arizona are in a CoreCivic-operated facility; contact Saguaro directly at (520) 466-3800 for provider and account setup details, as private facility contracts may differ from Hawaii-side systems.
Hawaii DCR facilities include Halawa Correctional Facility (Aiea, Oahu; medium security men's; (808) 485-5200), Waiawa Correctional Facility (Waipahu, Oahu; minimum security men's), Kulani Correctional Facility (Big Island), and Women's Community Correctional Center (Kailua, Oahu). Community correctional centers serving as jails operate on each major island: Oahu Community Correctional Center (Honolulu; (808) 832-1777), Maui Community Correctional Center (Wailuku; (808) 243-5101), Kauai Community Correctional Center (Lihue; (808) 241-3050), and Hawaii Community Correctional Center (Hilo; (808) 933-0431).
For visitation procedures at each facility, contact the facility directly or visit dcr.hawaii.gov. Families should note that visitation at Saguaro requires planning for air travel and a ground transfer in Arizona; it is not a drive-in visit.
DCR Office of the Director: (808) 587-1288. DCR mailing address: 1177 Alakea Street, Honolulu, HI 96813. Website: dcr.hawaii.gov.
Federal inmates in Hawaii are held in federal facilities under BOP jurisdiction. BOP communication uses TRULINCS for email via CORRLINKS and TRUFONE for phone. FCC rate caps apply; First Step Act programming offers 300 free minutes per month.
Where this leaves you
Hawaii's mainland transfer practice is one of the most extreme versions of separation in this series. It puts an ocean between families and parents. It puts families in a financial position where an in-person visit requires a plane ticket. It puts Native Hawaiian people in a desert facility that is culturally antithetical to everything they come from.
State lawmakers are working to end it. That work takes time.
What does not take time is the choice both parents make right now about how to use the contact they have. The incarcerated parent in Eloy who calls as if the call counts, who asks the real question and listens to the real answer, who says specifically what they see the outside parent doing and thanks them for it, is building something across 2,500 miles that the system is not designed to help them build. The outside parent who keeps the door open, who speaks carefully about the parent on the other side of the ocean, is doing the same. Those choices are available from anywhere in this system. Make them.