Corporations, Prisoners and Profit

Corrections officers work in the Enhanced Supervision Housing Unit at the Rikers Island Correctional facility in New York March 12, 2015. [Reuters/Brendan McDermid]

For many people in prison, handwritten letters and cards are one of the few tangible connections they have with the outside world. But for tens of thousands of federal prisoners, that connection is now in jeopardy.

In early August, the Biden administration announced it’s considering expanding a Trump-era program that restricts access to mail, allegedly in a bid to stop contraband entering prisons.

MailGuard, a service provided by the telecom company Smart Communications, was introduced by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) in two facilities in March 2020 as part of a pilot program. Under the service, all mail (excluding legal mail) is sent to a separate facility where civilian staffers scan it and then send the scanned copy either digitally to a tablet or kiosk or via snail mail.

A BOP spokesperson told Slate that, although the pilot ended in June, the agency is “considering the expansion of mail scanning pending funding.” Pennsylvania has been using the service for years, and Massachusetts correctional facilities are in the middle of a one-year pilot program.

While it might seem like scanning mail is a simple way to intercept drugs and other illegal items, the negative effects on incarcerated people and their loved ones far outweigh any potential benefits.

First, we know that it’s vital for prisoners to maintain connections with their families and loved ones while incarcerated. A study by the Urban Institute found that prisoners cited family as the main reason why they did not end up back in prison. And pen-pal programs through Black and Pink and the CAN-DO Foundation are crucial to prisoners who might not have people to correspond with otherwise.

But this new system could significantly reduce the quality of the correspondence and the connection.

Lynn Espejo, a formerly incarcerated activist, told me that other facilities that already prohibit incarcerated people from receiving physical mail and instead scan it in-house before delivery have had serious issues – along with depriving prisoners of the personalization that comes with mail, the practice has resulted in chunks of letters going missing. “They can't finish reading their mail,” she told me.

The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections has been using MailGuard since 2018 and said it introduced the service after prison staff members were exposed to drugs. Journalist Mia Armstrong reviewed photographs sent to prisoners there, finding that many were fuzzy and far from the quality that the sender likely intended.

The system also appears to contradict Biden’s stance against corporations profiting off incarceration.

The president promised during his campaign to ensure that the criminal justice system is focused on “redemption and rehabilitation,” and announced shortly after his inauguration that he would be directing the Department of Justice to stop renewing contracts with federal private prisons.

But expanding the MailGuard service will not only result in yet another private company profiting off incarceration, it will create additional barriers for prisoners trying to stay involved in the lives of those close to them. Prisoners must pay, often exorbitantly, for email, video visits and telephone calls (though the BOP has offered free phone calls for prisoners since early in the COVID-19 pandemic).

Mail, along with in-person visitation (though their loved ones will have to bear the burden of the cost of gas), are the only cheap privileges prisoners are permitted to stay in contact with people in the free world. There’s currently no policy that states prisoners will have to pay to access their mail if the MailGuard program is expanded, but prisoners will have to bear the cost in other ways.

“The program has a negligible impact on safety – but has devastating consequences to incarcerated people, severely affecting their emotional well-being, weakening family ties and hindering their ease of reentry upon release,” reads a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland signed by dozens of activist organizations.

If promoting rehabilitation and redemption is really on Biden’s agenda, Espejo told me, it’s vital that his administration reevaluate its use of MailGuard and allow prisoners to receive their mail again – the old-fashioned way.