'Unconscionable': NYC Wants to Scan Incarcerated People's Mail and Make Them Read It on Tablets

Last October, the commissioner of New York City’s jail system proposed a plan that is quickly becoming the norm in correctional facilities throughout the country: banning physical mail and replacing it with scanned versions of the mail that incarcerated people must read exclusively on tablet devices. 

Correctional facilities across the country have a variety of rationales they use to justify this, but largely it boils down to the fact that scanned electronic mail is easier to surveil than physical mail. NYC’s plan is ostensibly in response to a spike in overdoses in NYC’s jail system. Commissioner Louis Molina has claimed that fentanyl-soaked children’s drawings and t-shirts are being sent to jails, prompting him to request that mail be sent to an off-site vendor for scanning. The new rules would also limit packages to those sold from a limited, pre-approved set of vendors. 

On Tuesday, the city’s Board of Correction, the oversight body in charge of approving certain rule changes, held a hearing on Molina’s plan and took input from the public. Though the Board was expected to vote on the rule on Tuesday, it instead kicked the can down the road, creating a special committee to handle the rule change.

In a letter to the Board of Correction ahead of the hearing, 18 members of NYC’s city council came out against the proposed rule, writing, “It is unconscionable for DOC to propose taking away something that is such a positive source of human connection. Imposing these additional restrictions on correspondence and packages will likely lead to more frustration and tension—which will only exacerbate existing issues at our city’s jails.”

Council members also had privacy concerns should mail be recorded off-site by a private contractor. While mail is already monitored by correctional staff, it is not typically scanned and kept for posterity. According to council members, “Such data can be retained far into the future and be used against people even if they have never been charged with a crime, have been released from jail, or have had charges dismissed. These records will likely be shared with law enforcement, regardless of any stated policy.”

Previous attempts to digitize mail have resulted in first amendment lawsuits. The Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University sued the federal Bureau of Prisons after it switched to digitized mail in many of its facilities. Prisoners rights groups sued the Pennsylvania Department of Correction for the policy, claiming that digitizing mail violated attorney client privilege. Incarcerated people have said that scanned mail is also blurry and hard to see. Motherboard has also reported that the sender, not just the recipient, can be surveilled when these scanning systems are used.

The claim that most drugs are coming into NYC jails from mail is dubious. Overdoses in the jails spiked in 2020, even as people stopped receiving visits altogether. When Elijah Muhammed died from a fentanyl overdose  in the jail system last July, a correction officer was fired, though no explanation was given as to why. That month, a Department of Investigation official said that most drugs were not coming through the mail. There have been numerous indictments of NYC correctional officers who were smuggling drugs into the jails, including officers caught smuggling to Bloods members in exchange for $43,000 in bribes. In 2021, correctional officers were charged with giving K2-soaked paper to gang members in exchange for bribes. 

In Tuesday’s hearing, Molina again pushed back on claims that correctional officers were bringing in drugs, saying that the 25 indictments of correctional officers since 2017 for drug-smuggling did not indicate the officers were the main source of contraband.

19 people died in Rikers in 2022. Although the majority were not from overdoses, their cases were almost all the result of correctional negligence, including people not receiving needed medication and multiple suicides, despite the fact that the jail system has the highest staffing ratio in the country.