Help Us Protect Prison Mail!

The Biden Administration is depriving incarcerated people of their personal mail. Under a pilot program, the federal Bureau of Prisons redirects incoming mail to the for-profit company Smart Communications, which converts the greeting cards, letters, and other personal correspondence to digital scans and then destroys the originals. Incarcerated people can read their mail as a poor quality print out, on the screen of shared kiosks in public areas of the prison, or on a tablet provided by Smart Communications. This program is cruel, unnecessary, and a threat to privacy. It is also a potential boon for Smart Communications.

You can help. Right now, please join us in demanding that the Administration stop catering to private companies and protect incarcerated people’s mail. Fill out the form below to send an email to Attorney General Merrick Garland.

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Dear Attorney General Merrick Garland,

I am joining Just Detention International (JDI) in demanding that the Biden Administration end a federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) program to deprive people who they incarcerate of their ability to receive physical mail. BOP has contracted with a private company, Smart Communications, to pilot its MailGuard system at two federal prisons. MailGuard converts personal mail to electronic scans that are provided to prisoners either as a print out, through a personal tablet, or via a public kiosk. Smart Communications promotes the MailGuard system as being more secure than physical mail. In fact, 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. The mail-scanning program also undermines crucial confidential communications, including between incarcerated survivors of sexual abuse and outside advocates, as required by the Prison Rape Elimination Act. The program threatens to effectively eliminate access to mail communications for people with certain disabilities or for people without the means to purchase tablets. In short, MailGuard places profit-based incentives above the well-being of incarcerated people with minimal to no security benefit. The Biden Administration must halt the MailGuard pilot program immediately and ensure that all incarcerated people continue to receive traditional physical mail.

Eliminating mail is needlessly cruel. Physical mail is a lifeline for people who are incarcerated. It provides a palpable link to the outside world. Letters from family members, drawings from children, and greeting cards from loved ones help maintain family and community connections that are critical to incarcerated people's ability to serve their time safely while maintaining a sense of hope for the future. Numerous academic and public health studies have documented the positive effects of receiving letters on prisoners' mental health, which, in turn, leads to better reentry outcomes. Indeed, BOP itself recognizes the vital role of strong familial contacts, noting on its website that it "encourages inmates to write to family, friends, and other community contacts to maintain these ties during incarceration."

Written correspondence is especially crucial for incarcerated survivors of sexual abuse, who rely on outside communication from advocates and loved ones to help them heal from trauma they have endured in the government's custody. Referring to his first letter from JDI after being raped multiple times while in a California prison, the late Joe Booth -- a longtime survivor advocate -- once said, "If you had offered me a bar of gold for that letter, I wouldn't have traded it." People in prison treasure the mail that they receive, and many save letters to read again and again to remind them that there are people on the outside who are thinking of them and who care about them.

MailGuard compromises confidential communication. Mail-scanning by third-party vendors severely undermines confidential communications with incarcerated survivors of sexual abuse -- a cornerstone of rape crisis advocacy. Survivors need to feel comfortable sharing highly personal, painful feelings and experiences with outside advocates to heal from abuse and develop healthy coping skills. Many community-based rape crisis centers negotiate with corrections agencies to ensure that their mail to survivors is delivered "in as confidential a manner as possible," consistent with national Prison Rape Elimination Act standards. Yet confidentiality protections do not extend to third-party vendors like Smart Communications, whose actions jeopardize the privacy of sexual abuse survivors. Worse still, prison kiosks -- the only option for many incarcerated people to read their mail under MailGuard -- afford little privacy; they are located in public places, such as dayrooms, and are only accessible at certain times of day and within a set time limit.

Making mail accessible only through crude scans or tablets harms people with disabilities and people with limited resources. People with certain disabilities can be especially disadvantaged under mail-scanning programs. Incarcerated people are three times more likely than people in the community to have a visual impairment, which can make kiosk screens and printed scans less accessible than physical material sent by advocates or loved ones who understand their needs. While personal tablets allow for a measure of privacy, some jurisdictions charge for them, making them out of reach for most people serving time. The high cost of tablets creates power disparities and scarcity among incarcerated people, which allow abuses to flourish. What's more, many people in prison, especially the elderly, have limited experience using tablets, and few prisons offer training.

MailGuard incentivizes corporations to profit from incarceration. The Biden Administration claims to have staked out a strong position against prison privatization. But the Administration's embrace of third-party mail vendors like Smart Communications perpetuates the very model of profit-driven incarceration that it purports to oppose. Indeed, while scans of letters may be provided for free, the clear intention of Smart Communications' program is to push incarcerated people, along with their advocates and loved ones, toward exorbitantly priced paid services like email or phone calls.

The claimed benefit of MailGuard and similar programs is that they prevent contraband drugs from entering facilities. Certainly, corrections officials are obligated to provide a secure environment free of contraband. But mail-scanning is a misguided approach. While incoming letters laced with drugs may present a problem in some prisons, state-level data indicates that mail-scanning programs have had a negligible effect on the overall rates of contraband entering facilities. If an incarcerated person is caught with drugs, it could provide a basis for thoroughly screening or even scanning that person's mail -- but it does not provide a legitimate basis for punishing everyone living inside the prison. By doing away with MailGuard, BOP can spend more money on treatment, mental health programming, and other measures that help people get back on their feet -- not on measures that exacerbate their isolation.

Banning physical mail harms the well-being of incarcerated people, while offering no meaningful benefits. Yet despite MailGuard's flaws, BOP is in no hurry to cancel it; in fact, the agency has signaled that it may expand the program to additional facilities. At the same time, state departments of correction and county jails are rolling out similar mail restrictions; if the federal government continues to endorse MailGuard, more jurisdictions are likely to follow suit. By supporting the program, the Biden Administration is enabling a business model wherein a private company can make a profit by replacing the cheapest and safest form of communication available to incarcerated people -- physical mail -- with a service that is inaccessible, inequitable, and that fails to meet basic privacy requirements.

People who are incarcerated deserve better. Their loved ones, and their advocates in the community, have long relied on mail to maintain healthy relationships and offer emotional support. The Administration should be looking for ways to encourage such connections, rather than adopting policies that undermine it. BOP must immediately end MailGuard and any other policies that restrict incarcerated people’s access to their personal mail.

Sincerely,

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