Return to Sender: Postcard-only Mail Policies in Jails

by Leah Sakala

 

When I first started writing our incarcerated brothers and sisters as a part of our Prison/ Jail Ministry here at Mercy, I ran into a lot of hurdles in regards to the individual policies at each facility. The seemingly simple act of writing people turned into tedious production, trying to learn the numerous polices of the handful of jails we have here in Atlanta.The firs few weeks of our letter writing campaign at Mercy can be summarized with following three words "Return To Sender." Leah Sakala has done a great job taking a closer look at the national trend of banning letters and moving solely to postcards. 

February 7, 2013

1. Introduction

"Over the past five years, dozens of local jails across the country have followed a harmful new policy trend: mandating that all personal written correspondence to or from jail take place via postcard. The postcard-only trend began in 2007, when controversial Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio instituted a ban on any incoming non-legal mail except for postcards.[1] Since then, sheriffs from jails in at least 13 states around the country—Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Kansas, Michigan, Missouri, Oregon, Tennessee, Utah, and Washington—have followed suit by implementing their own postcard-only restrictions on incoming and outgoing mail, radically restricting incarcerated people’s ability to communicate with the outside world. Although several jails that implemented postcard-only policies have since rescinded or relaxed their regulations in response to public pressure and litigation, dozens of postcard-only policies still stand, and more are introduced each year.

 Postcard-only mail policies are ostensibly crafted to save funds by streamlining the mail screening process and limiting opportunities to introduce contraband into correctional facilities. In practice, they have the perverse effect of deterring written communication between incarcerated people and their communities,[2] straining connections that are essential for both successful reintegration and for preventing reoffending. Social science research has repeatedly documented the significant social and economic value of preserving the community and family support systems that keep formerly incarcerated people from returning to jail. Postcard-only policies run contrary to prevailing correctional standards and best practices, and the vast majority of jail facilities around the country, as well as all other kinds of detention facilities, successfully implement mail security measures without imposing dramatic postcard-only restrictions."



To read this article in its entirety and find addition information on  Criminal Justice Policy, head over to  http://www.prisonpolicy.org/postcards/report.html.

 

Hard Time and Hard Hearts

By: Justin Chambers

My oldest brother has been in jail for the majority of my life.  In fact, he is in jail now.  My mom used to try to get me and my other brother to write our oldest brother in jail.  I had no interest in it.  As they say, ‘Out of sight, out of mind.’  Being in jail so often, my brother was rarely in sight and only on my mind when my mother mentioned him.  If I were to say that we were close when he was around, that would be a lie.  Not only did he make bad choices, but he frequently dragged me into the messes he had made.  To be honest, I did not have anything I wanted to say, much less write, to him.  When he would call me collect on my phone, I would become angry; what I perceived as his manipulation did not seem to stop, even at a distance.  He asked me to deliver messages to lots of people, but he never asked about me.

A couple of months back, we started a letter writing campaign at Mercy to encourage our sisters and brothers in jail.  I started writing people I have known for little over a year, and others whom I have never met, reminding them that they are loved and missed.  I was surprised to realize that every jail or prison has different guidelines as to what type of mail can be received and sent by inmates.  In one jail, inmates can receive letters in standard envelopes; another jail requires that mail must come in the form of plain white three by five postcards issued and pre-stamped by the post office.  All of them seem to differ on how or if newspapers, books (including Bibles), or other packages can be sent.  It took me quite a while to sort it all out—the first batch of letters came back with big red stamps informing us that we needed to try again and adhere to policy.

Part of my job is to encourage our community to write our community members who are in jail.  I was surprised with how much resistance I met.  Many folks did not want to write someone else as no one had reached out to them when they were last locked-up.  The loneliness and bitterness was apparently still very fresh for them.  People are now rising to the occasion, however.  I think this is in part because our community is beginning to understand that, as Mahatma Gandhi said, ‘We must be the change we want to see in the world.’ I also think it is in part because people we have written are coming back into the community and are expressing their appreciation for the letters.  I am now sought out by members of our community about the writing program: folks want to know if they have received correspondence from a friend in jail, if there are new people to write, and if I have new postcards to reply to letters already received.  It does my heart good to hear this change of heart in our community.

Now I realize how hard my heart had gotten towards my own brother and how hurtful my silence may have been.  Until I started trying to write inmates, I never imagined how difficult communication could be—perhaps it was not that my brother did not care about me when he called, but that I actually picked up the phone and was the only lifeline he had to communicate with others.  

My eyes were opened further when I had the opportunity to visit a county jail, as well as a maximum-security prison.  While at Jackson Diagnostic and Classification Prison, I felt sick to my stomach.  People--our people, God’s people--were chained and bound, locked down in little cells, practically confined to their beds, bunked three high, for twenty-three out of twenty-four hours each day.  Long gone are the days of exercising in the yard or watching television, much less receiving services that might help an inmate to one day leave the prison as a productive, skilled member of society.  Our ‘correctional system’ no longer aims to ‘correct’ behavior patterns.  Instead as Chaplain Harrell explained it to me, ‘There was a problem in society—someone committed a crime, so we corrected it—we removed them from society.  Prob-lem solved.’  In this business of warehousing people, any contact where someone is known by a name, not just a number, is welcome and rare.

I never expected this year to bring healing to a place in my heart broken and bruised and buried so deep I nearly forgot it was there—my relationship with my brother.  My heart has softened, maybe not yet as much as it may, but it is a start.  In this digital age, we forget how important a hand-written three by five post card reminding us that we are beloved can be.