If you didn’t already have a bank account before you were incarcerated, it’s almost impossible to open one while you are incarcerated. Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations require verifying a potential customer’s identity, as a precaution against money laundering and the like. This involves producing a state-issued photo ID such as a driver’s license, non-driver ID card, passport, etc. But not the kind prisoners wear clipped to their shirt at all times.
In addition to your department of corrections ID number, your prison ID card bears a recent photo and such details as your legal name, height, weight, hair color, eye color and date of birth. It is issued by the state. If it isn’t a secure form of identification, that’s an insult to corrections departments across the country. These are the very agencies in whose custody we send people deemed too dangerous for society, but banks don’t seem to think they can be trusted to have come up with a viable identification process.
Many people in prison no longer have a valid AKA non-expired driver’s license, and many never had one to begin with. You might know your state ID number, the one that would go on your non-driver ID card, but banks aren’t likely to care if you don’t have the card itself.
Mojo*, incarcerated in the same medium-security Georgia prison as I am, tried to open an account at the bank where his brother has been a client since the 1980s. His brother went into the bank with Mojo’s photo ID from before he was incarcerated, along with notarized documents showing he has financial power of attorney for Mojo.
“The bank manager was as nice as could be expected in the business, but simply refused to open an account in my name,” Mojo said. “[He] expressed a concern about the potential harm to his bank’s reputation.”
It’s not that we represent illicit financial activity. It’s that we represent negligible financial activity.
To even attempt the process of opening a bank account you’ll need a residential address you can submit besides the one where you currently reside, which isn’t something a lot of incarcerated folks necessarily have. You might have given them a viable outside address, your state ID number and have an outside power of attorney waving hardcopies of the proper documents, and they’re still going to ask you to produce a birth certificate. This is something banks otherwise only need for verifying the identity of minors. Because minors have no state-issued photo ID. Whereas prisoners do, but banks simply prefer to pretend otherwise.
It’s not actually that we represent too high a risk of money laundering or other illicit financial activity. It’s that we represent negligible financial activity. We’re not going shopping or out to dinner. We’re not applying for mortgages or financing on our new cars. Low priority due to low profitability.
It’s not just banks that prefer we don’t have our own bank accounts. Corrections departments will contract with banks to manage our in-prison accounts, which operate under their own set of rules that renders them non-interest bearing—for the prisoners.
Each facility holds everyone’s funds on their behalf like a trust, as one lump sum, and so that’s where the interest goes. And as long as what money we have is in the hands of corrections departments, they can ensure we can only spend it on their marked-up commissary items while being charged fees for every possible kind of transaction. Of course the for-profit corporations that offer correctional financial services and lobby heavily to protect their dividends don’t want to lose us as customers either.
“I’ve been afraid to look at my credit score.”
Some corrections departments will help you get your state ID card, social security card, birth certificate, even help renew your driver’s license if you had one and it wasn’t expired for too long. If you’re about to be released, that is. If not, what could you possibly need ID for?
“I’ve been afraid to look at my credit score,” said Polo*, who was released on parole earlier in 2025. “I have a debit card that I load on payday and use all week. I have my name on one of my siblings‘ company credit cards for business expenses, but I doubt they do a thing for my rating.”
It’s hard to take seriously the platitudes about preparing prisoners for successful re-entry while refusing them the chance to establish and build credit. According to every re-entry preparation class anywhere, that’s a very important thing to do. I once saw a plan proposing to help us achieve a credit score of 750 in just 90 days through “credit-building loans,” but unfortunately they required large deposits to get things started.
Names have been changed to protect sources.
Image via Consumer Protection Bureau
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