NYC Jails Want To Ban Physical Mail, then Privatize Scanning of Digital Versions (theintercept.com) 57
The New York City Department of Correction wants to stop incarcerated people from receiving physical mail inside city jails. From a report: The department, known as DOC, said the proposed changes are part of an effort to increase safety in the jail system by cracking down on illegal contraband following the deaths of 19 people last year at Rikers Island, the city's jail complex. Several of the people died from apparent drug overdoses, including at least one from fentanyl.
The main source of contraband inside city jails, though, has been corrections staff, not mail, critics of the policy change said. Instead, the move to scrap physical mail opens the door to private firms to set up surveillance systems against incarcerated people. City officials and advocates are concerned about an apparent plan to contract with a company called Securus -- a leading provider of phone calling systems for prisons and jails with a controversial past -- to digitize detainees' mail and make it available to searches.
"Contractors are explicitly advertising unprecedented surveillance," said Stephanie Krent, a staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, speaking about firms like Securus that specialize in prison communications. "That's surveillance that's going to fall most harshly on marginalized communities." The proposed changes follow a nationwide trend of prisons and jails moving to stop incarcerated people from receiving physical mail. Prisons in Pennsylvania stopped physical mail in 2018, and prisons in Massachusetts started sending incarcerated people photocopies of original letters. Last year, prisons in New Mexico and Florida adopted similar changes, and Texas has also limited in-person mail. There is little evidence that those changes have stopped the flow of drugs, the Vera Institute wrote in a March report: "With no evidence that these bans improve security, it's only the for-profit contractors that stand to benefit from these arrangements."
The main source of contraband inside city jails, though, has been corrections staff, not mail, critics of the policy change said. Instead, the move to scrap physical mail opens the door to private firms to set up surveillance systems against incarcerated people. City officials and advocates are concerned about an apparent plan to contract with a company called Securus -- a leading provider of phone calling systems for prisons and jails with a controversial past -- to digitize detainees' mail and make it available to searches.
"Contractors are explicitly advertising unprecedented surveillance," said Stephanie Krent, a staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, speaking about firms like Securus that specialize in prison communications. "That's surveillance that's going to fall most harshly on marginalized communities." The proposed changes follow a nationwide trend of prisons and jails moving to stop incarcerated people from receiving physical mail. Prisons in Pennsylvania stopped physical mail in 2018, and prisons in Massachusetts started sending incarcerated people photocopies of original letters. Last year, prisons in New Mexico and Florida adopted similar changes, and Texas has also limited in-person mail. There is little evidence that those changes have stopped the flow of drugs, the Vera Institute wrote in a March report: "With no evidence that these bans improve security, it's only the for-profit contractors that stand to benefit from these arrangements."
can't do that to legal mail / bill inmates for it (Score:2)
can't do that to legal mail / bill inmates for it
Re: (Score:1)
Sounds like they are taking away a means of saving tax payers money.
Inmates Darwin themselves....taxpayer saves money.
Should go to their attorney. (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm betting if you sign things letting such private companies receive your mail, they could then read it and share that information with parties you would rather not. At least if it goes to your attorney, they shouldn't be able to share it. Yes? No?
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How many convicts have an attorney? A public defender is done after the trial.
Re:Should go to their attorney. (Score:4, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Does the inmate pay for the scanning? I don't think that's the case (the article certainly doesn't suggest that). This appears to be a cost savings move on the part of the jail/prison system.
It's not a privacy issue if it's used only for communications that are not privileged (such as between an attorney and their client). Institutions already have the complete right, and routinely exercise that right, to monitor such communications.
In the case of incoming "casual" mail, it's routinely carefully searched fo
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That is false. For example, privatizing food service in a prison does not mean that inmates pay for their meals -- it just means that the state pays a contractor to provide the food rather than maintaining their own stock/kitchen etc. Entire prisons are "privatized" and, yet, that does not mean that inmates necessarily pay for their room and board (some jurisdictions, regardless of if their incarceration facilities are "privatized" or
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Yes, the facility must provide privacy between attorney and client. For example, video calls on Securus are not monitored if the caller is an attorney registered with the facility.
I expect other physical mail to be opened, read, and censored, just like military mail during wartime [wikipedia.org].
So with the attorney-client protection in place, I don't really see a problem, other than the possibility of the scans falling into the wrong hands due to hacking or mishandling.
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How come you arent addressing the wrong hands they PLAN to hand the mail to?
What gives?
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That's true, it should be illegal to sell or give the information away.
Your future begins in elite downtown! (Score:1)
Won't change anything (Score:3, Informative)
They say they are trying to stop the flow of contraband items. What they are afraid to say the real source of contraband is not coming in through the mail It is coming in through visitors and crooked guards.
But on that note, there are also some people in prison that really shouldn't be getting any mail, phone calls, or visitors. That is outside of their lawyer. I honestly can't think of any reason a mundane person, family including, should have been visiting, writing, or calling Charles Manson.
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Those convicted of minor crimes and given short sentences also often serve their time in an institution classified as a 'jail'. Jails also hold those who have been convicted but are awaiting transfer to a prison.
Even those being held for trial are deprived of many of their rights -- most notably, their right to be free. For security reasons, all incoming mail from non-trusted sources (generally lawyers) needs to be carefully searched regardless of if the recipient has awaiting trial or is serving their sent
No (Score:3)
You wanna make a change to the mail system? State's gotta pay a bunch of local monks (or counters) to open and re-pen correspondence.
Come to think of it, we should make sure we proved the inmates are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt . . . or have to prove inscrutably that they were processed completely within the bill of rights . . . .
Saaaaaaay, I just had a few more ideas . . .
Re: No (Score:4, Informative)
Come to think of it, we should make sure we proved the inmates are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt . . .
Many people in jail are there waiting for their day in court.
Conning convicts out of their cash (Score:5, Insightful)
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We like to keep crooks on both sides of the bars, for the sake of balance.
Slavery of convicts is explicitly legal in US (Score:5, Informative)
America is a slave state [theatlantic.com].
I believe there are some states (~7?) which have prohibited slavery even of prisoners, but it's still explicitly legal in this country. And it remains legal in New York [dataforprogress.org], as well as the nation's other most populous state (California.)
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How can you say that? Prisons don’t keep good records on the number of incarcerated workers injured on the job. You don't have the data to back up your claim.
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Can you back that up? (nevermind the fact that you turned "worked to death" into "injured")
https://www.aclu.org/news/huma... [aclu.org]
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Most people who are in jail, especially those who are in jail for minor offenses, are there simply because of the color of their skin.
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Sure...I mean, it couldn't possibly be, because "people of color" commit FAR more crimes/violent crimes than their percentage of the populace in the US.
Nope, couldn't be that at all...has to be an unfair system, that's the ticket...yeah....
[rolls eyes]
Re:Conning convicts out of their cash (Score:4, Insightful)
Most people who are in jail, especially those who are in jail for minor offenses, are there simply because of the color of their skin.
Sure...I mean, it couldn't possibly be, because "people of color" commit FAR more crimes/violent crimes than their percentage of the populace in the US.
You're both wrong, but you're more wrong.
Again and again, studies of pretty much anything in most of the world show systemic prejudice. Presenting as anything other than a white male is a detriment almost everywhere — even in most of Africa, light-skinned people have an advantage over dark-skinned people in basically everything except not getting a sunburn.
Studies in the US in particular show that the further away you get from being a white male, the more likely you are to be convicted of a crime, the less likely you are to get callbacks from job applications, the more likely you are to be wrongfully terminated, etc etc.
Now, it is true that even with these biases black people do seem to commit some crimes more than white people, but those crimes are correlated more strongly with poverty than with color. And the endemic prejudice that affects them means that it's more difficult to get out of poverty. Remember, "lift yourself up by your bootstraps" was literally coined as a phrase meaning something impossible. Black people cannot get themselves out of the hole they're in by themselves, and they didn't get there by themselves either.
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You're just an apologist for individual irresponsibility.
If you want to talk about responsibility then you are going to have acknowledge that it's not a victim's responsibility to not be victimized.
Re: Conning convicts out of their cash (Score:1)
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FFS the Civil Rights Act was passed almost 60 years ago.
If you think white people stopped oppressing black people because the civil rights act was passed, we all can understand why you're posting as AC. Even you know your ideas are too stupid to associate with even a throwaway identity.
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With few exceptions, yes.
Why do you hate science?
Most "white people" don't have time in their day to go out of their way to figure how to oppress anyone
They don't have to figure it out. It's baked into the system they fund with their taxes, and they do nothing to change it.
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What jail or prison charged the inmate $15 per piece of mail handled for reasonable quantities of mail? I don't think, for example, that the Federal prisons that have implemented mail scanning systems are doing so.
Re: Stuffed envelopes... for the warden (Score:1)
the people behind this brilliant idea
A private equity firm in Beverly Hills, CA. It reorganizes fast enough that it is difficult to determine who owns what at any given time. I suspect that it's a front for a bunch of wealthy Hollywood liberal types.
Why not ... (Score:2)
handwritten physical letters FTW (Score:4, Insightful)
As a 'free' person, I adore getting a handwritten letter from a loved one, any time, over an email. Certainly the times we couldn't see one another for prolonged periods.
And yes, I still do send physical wish cards for birthdays and mid December, sometimes write (and get) longer letters by hand, too.
Got a special place for these letters I receive, in my home as in my heart. Email? Not so much.
I can only imagine how inmates cherish the letters they get from family, friends or their love. Putting such on a display for viewing during assigned times totally does away with the little physical encounters and tangible memories of loved ones these people have.
V-Mail (Score:3)
During WW2, GIs would write letters on "V-Mail" or Victory Mail which was a preprinted letter which was photographed and shrunk down onto a photographic slide. Then it was transported and turned back to a facsimile for the recipient. Not only was it easier to carry in aircraft than regular mail, but it also made it harder to send coded information or to read censored words. Apparently a billion messages were sent that way.
Prisons could probably do something similar although I could see it being very demoralising especially if most contraband is actually coming in through some other manner.
Not sure how that will work ... (Score:2)
IANAL, but I recently read that, technically, US mail remains the property of the sender until it's delivered to the recipient. If so, it seems that the prison would have to get approval of the sender to open / scan that mail first. Otherwise, they'd have to actually deliver it to the prisoner, then confiscate it (using some bullshit rule), open and scan it, then re-deliver it for a fee. Unless sending mail to a prisoner means actually sending it to the prison, like "c/o", and not the prisoner.
In any ca
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Prisons could just return the mail to sender unless they give approval.
Playboy magazine (Score:4, Interesting)
So a private company will be paid to create an illegal copy and transmission of my Playboy magazine? Then there's HIPPA violations for medical information, invasion of judicial privacy for legal professionals, and blocking of any mail-in paperwork requiring a signature.
Plus, an online copy of everything is a big attack surface that a private company is unlikely to defend successfully and, let's remember, that for-profit prisons (in NYC) have a guaranteed income yet operate everything below normal commercial standards.
Obligatory (Score:1)
Rights (Score:2)
Prisoners need to have the same rights as everyone else. Geeze, it's only fair.