This story made me nauseous with worry that the U.S., in a fit of authoritarianism, is giving away something we can’t take back. I reposted it at Alternet, but I’m not entirely sure it will immediately register with people how serious a problem this is. It’s the classic frog in boiling water effect—the indignities slapped on prisoners in the U.S. have become so routine that we are failing to notice violations of the most basic rights.
Pen pals of Lee County Jail inmates should start stocking up on postcards.
Starting April 20, that’s the only kind of personal mail they’ll be able to receive.
Pictures will have to be printed on postcards, and envelopes won’t be allowed, unless they contain legal correspondence.
Capt. Tom Eberhardt, assistant commander of corrections services, said the new policy is in response to the biohazard threat that locked down Charlotte County Jail last month when a mail clerk fell ill after opening a letter containing a white powdered substance.
“That’s happening more and more in the country because of the times we’re living in,” Eberhardt said. “We’re doing this for the safety and security of the staff and the inmates.”
It’s a perfect storm of events to show how 21st century American authoritarianism works, right down to hiding behind the threat of terrorism. Stripping people of their personal dignity is central, and it doesn’t even matter what you did, because “deserve” has nothing to do with it.* The mail is traditionally sacred, an inviolable right. This prison skipped right over the soul-searching about whether or not to read prisoner mail right to banning prisoner mail. From what I understand, even the Nazis at Nuremberg were allowed to write and receive letters, and I doubt a single soul inside this prison did anything as bad as oversee the genocide of 12 million people or start a war that took the lives of 50 million people. Mail is both symbolic of your connection with other people, and a practical measure to maintain that connection. Depriving people of their connection to others is a way of saying that you think they’re basically animals.
And yet, it’s going to be hard to get people to care, because I can tell you without looking at the stats what percentage of white people is affected by this decision—not very many. Which is why organizations like the ACLU are considered so terrible by right wingers, I suppose. I always maintain a bit of amazement that the ACLU can be easily demonized by right wingers, since having your civil liberties is popular on both the left and the right, but I guess the logic worked by right wingers is that they’ll never be the ones seeing their voting rights stripped or their ass thrown in prison for an indefinite period with no charges filed. But that’s the sort of attitude that lets this crap sneak up on you until it, like a slowly moving flood, has spilled past your yard and is starting to come in under the doors.
Bean addresses some of the practical issues at stake, including how this decision will affect recidivism rates, so check out her post.
*Name that quote.
32 Responses to “Prison looks askance at one stable source of human dignity”
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Wait, I’m lost here.
If there was an outbreak of anthrax among prison mail personnel, wouldn’t it be all the fuck over the media? I mean, wouldn’t this be another national frenzy like the last time that happened?
The fact that I haven’t heard about an anthrax outbreak kind of implies that these claims that prisoners are using bio-terrorist mail (what for? I mean, what is that going to get you besides possibly a longer sentence?) are bullshit.
“Deserve aint got nothin to do with it” - Snoop Pearson to Michael Lee
“Deserve aint got nothin to do with it” - William Munney to Little Bill - Unforgiven
Maybe it’s not being publicized because, if someone in mass media mentions anthrax, someone somewhere might remember that nobody’s ever been charged with the 2001 anthrax mailings, and that the investigation seems to have been completely dropped. Then that someone might question whether the “We haven’t been attacked since 9/11″ canard of the Bush administration is actually true, and then everything falls apart.
Both y’all are correct.
It’s all about the hierarchy. Besides, it’s not like they weren’t already searching the mail anyway.
This is just so sick and sadistic that I’m really at a loss.
Searching the mail is horrible, but with searching, at least you still get to read from your loved ones. I’ve never written anyone in prision, but I have written to people in boot camp. Just the greetings would take longer than the postcard.
Antigone’s point about how long a postcard is got me thinking.
You know, postcards don’t cost all that much to buy or mail in the scheme of things. If we were to run a campaign, say from a high-traffic blog, to, say, provide prison staff with a lot of practice reading postcards, inmates might be able to get more correspondence in a more timely manner. I mean, you know what they say - practice makes perfect.
For some reason the word “flood” keeps coming to mind.
i work at a minimum security prison in idaho, so i have a little input about mail searching.
probably what made the employee sick, if i had to guess, was some type of illicit drug, not anthrax. that is one of the main reasons mail is searched. it is fairly common for people to attempt to send drugs in to jail/prison. you can send in heroin thinly layered between a postcard with an identical postcard picture on top, you can soak a letter in acid, you can attempt to sneak meth in via letters. sometimes people are clever about it, and sometimes they aren’t, but it’s worth enough money inside for them to try.
also, money orders have to be processed by mailroom, and cash/checks are not allowed inside the compound.
nude photos are not allowed, and mail must be searched to confiscate them.
gang members use mail to communicate criminal intentions, often with codes or symbolism. those types of communication may be monitored.
all that aside, i think it’s stupid that they are going to only allow postcards at that particular jail. the majority of letters are from loved ones and are not going to hurt anyone. mailroom just has to take the correct precautions when opening mail to avoid danger. they are supposed to wear gloves and a mask and be aware of odd looking letters.
ps i’ve been a correctional officer (not prison guard, for the love of fsm i hate that term) for seven months, and i do not like it. is not the offenders’ fault, as they are generally respectful and easy to get along with. it is because the prison officials treat everyone (offenders and staff) with suspicion, as though we are all dumb, uneducated, untrustworthy and up to no good.
i like the way you think, auguste.
Can we address them all to Prisoner 24601?
How is this a biohazard, compared to it being, say, someone assuming a white powder being sent in an envelope was drugs (rightly or wrongly), and having an adverse reaction to whatever it was? A smidgeon of proof or justification would be nice, but, alas, apparently optionalThis is far from the first jail to implement a policy like this. Several of the jails here in Arizona have had this postcard-only policy for a while now.
Capt. Tom Eberhardt, assistant commander of corrections services, said the new policy is in response to the biohazard threat that locked down Charlotte County Jail last month when a mail clerk fell ill after opening a letter containing a white powdered substance.
This is the key graf: once again, the state uses the excuse of a trumped-up outlier “security threat” to take away the rights and privileges of everyone. For obvious reasons, prisons provide a useful test market for these subtractive measures.
“This is far from the first jail to implement a policy like this. Several of the jails here in Arizona have had this postcard-only policy for a while now.”
That don’t mean it’s right…
Wow, thanks for taking this up! I’m from Lee County and have been trying to drum up interest, so I’m thrilled to see some more people interested in this.
irstly,
While there was a lot of noise when the white powder first showed up, it was much ado about nothing. Tests have shown that it was most definitely not anthrax, and not hazardous.. They’re thinking it’s meth, cocaine, or bleach.
If anyone’s interested in more information, or contact info for the Lee County Sheriff’s office it’s found here.
Infection-grade anthrax is not that easy to get hold of.
NancyP: Actually infection grade anthrax is easy to get (Cattle get it all the time from kicking up dust), generally just have to dig around in the dirt, and know how to culture bacteria, it’s the arisolation (if that’s even a word) that is hard. There is currently a black patent on how to take Anthrax spores and make them usable as a weapon. My Senior year in college (2004) the bio department had a guy who did a lot of bio defense research come in and give a talk. He gave a talk to my seminar prior to the lecture, and one of the things we talked about was Anthrax (it was a hot topic in the news). There was a lot he could tell us, and we basically determined that anyone with a BS in Biology could easily culture anthrax if they wanted to. The one it’s actually making it into a weapon that is the hard (and secret) part.
I love how this petty vindictiveness is billed as protecting the inmates as well as the staff. As others have pointed out, it won’t stop dangerous materials from being mailed in, it will just make it a little easier for mail censors to do their jobs.
And it will probably lead to a crackdown on lawyers as some of them agree to append personal messages to legal correspondence…
A lot of people don’t seem to understand that their individual actions create the times we live in.
So, I’m thinking the prison guard opened the envelope, saw the white powder, snorted it, and got sick. Right?
I’m pretty sure that would be impossible, considering attorney/client privilege.
Question: could there be a constitutional challenge to this? 8th amendment maybe>
You know, I’ve never been able to figure out where the right-wing hatred of the ACLU comes from. Indeed, I didn’t even know it existed until talking to a friend recently (he’s a recovering conservative) who surprised the bejeezus out of me by vehemently bashing the ACLU. Coming from an atheist family (and living in Kansas!), I’ve always thought of the ACLU as a good thing, and it really surprised me that this guy, as big on individual freedom as he is (he identifies as Libertarian/Constitutionalist) could see the ACLU as anything but an ally in the fight against the loss of civil liberties.
I think your explanation’s the best I’ve heard so far; that the right-wing ideas recovering ‘wingers cling to the most jealously are those that prevent them from coming face-to-face with their privilege. So while you might not still be a Bush-supporting, Bible-brandishing neocon, you’ll probably still spend a few more years believing things like “black men commit most crimes,” “affirmative-action beneficiaries are just looking for a handout,” “racism is no longer a problem,” or “reverse discrimination exists.”
Indeed, my friend’s beef with the ACLU is a form of the reverse-discrimination meme: he says it discriminates against Christians.
Have any of y’all encountered this?
A person I work with who is extremely conservative/republican thought the ACLU was a bunch of atheists who were only working to rid the united states of religion. I provided her with a case they were working on that disproved her and she seemed stunned and said something along the lines of well maybe they aren’t all bad but they are still atheists.
Most people at my workplace seem to hate the ACLU, I’m afraid to ask them if they think the same thing as my co-worker.
As someone who used to frequently correspond with a prisoner (a family member of my ex-fiance), I can say that the people this hurts most are the family. They always searched the mail I sent him. In fact, if I sent a particularly long letter that required extra stamps, they usually cut the envelope to shreds removing the stamps and wound up just giving him the letter itself. I sent him news articles, case law to use in his appeal, and a variety of other things that just can’t be put on a post card.
Restricting the mail of an individual receiving hazardous mail is acceptable. Restricting it for the entire prison is bullshit.
I think you may be looking too hard for racism here. People wont be bothered by these actions because the affected are criminals, not because they are black. Criminals are a tough group to be sympathetic towards.
Criminals are a tough group to be sympathetic towards.
Only if you don’t know jack shit about the War on Drugs and the way prostitutes are treated in the justice system.
Criminals are a tough group to be sympathetic towards.
Only if you don’t know jack shit about the War on Drugs and the way prostitutes are treated in the justice system.
You know, postcards don’t cost all that much to buy or mail in the scheme of things. If we were to run a campaign, say from a high-traffic blog, to, say, provide prison staff with a lot of practice reading postcards, inmates might be able to get more correspondence in a more timely manner. I mean, you know what they say - practice makes perfect.
The temptation here is to try finding out the names of, say, half the prisoners in one place, and send them each a postcard.
The postcard would be filled with randomly generated letters, arranged in groups of five, and sent from an anonymous source. Let the authorities drive themselves bugshit trying to figure out what is being said and to whom…
“The postcard would be filled with randomly generated letters, arranged in groups of five, and sent from an anonymous source. Let the authorities drive themselves bugshit trying to figure out what is being said and to whom…”
I’m guessing that would lead to prisoners being water-boarded, tazed, or some other method to extract who their “contact” was.
I realize you’re not serious Phoenician, but that could lead to serious problems…
That’s why I suggested sending it to half the prison.
And, no, I wasn’t serious.
Then again - sending it to one person you really didn’t like might be - um, never mind.
I’ve heard many stories on how The Man put good ole Joe away for doin’ nottin’. Funny how it changes when you look behind the denials.
Prison should rehabilitate or isolate. We have idiot kids that want to go to prison and once there, never want to return. Or, they need to be caged and forgotten until burial. Fine with me.
Wait a few years, newbie CO. Prisoners play games and you’ll have to be careful. They have nothing to lose. You do.