The Lingering Mail Banning Threat At CCJ:
A Predatory Tool Of Surveillance and Profit that Must Be Stopped
(this article appeared in Midwest Books Community Zine 2023)
In recent months, Administrators at Cook County Jail have escalated their repressive campaign against free speech and due process rights by enforcing extreme limitations on the amounts of information and reading materials our community members locked inside can have in their possession. Attorneys are now prohibited from bringing in any papers whatsoever during legal visits, denying people access to the evidence they need to fight their case. Guards are going cell to cell stealing people’s reading materials enforcing a harsh 3 book limit while cracking down in the mailroom with an increase of petty rejections for books with “stains”, “saturation”, “crinkled pages”, etc. There are no libraries at CCJ and no budget for books or legal materials, but they’re pumping millions into restrictive tablets with expensive “email” functionality. These alarm bells demonstrate how they’re following the shameful nationwide trend of censorship, privatization and digitization.
In February 2023, Sheriff Tom Dart worked with WGN9 to release a five minute copaganda video showing mail guards inspecting stacks of letters, blaming mail and books for the rise in overdose deaths. Beginning with the headline “it’s a new war on drugs inside Cook County Jail”, it’s more of the same failed fear and misinfo pushing criminalization and restrictions when what is actually needed is resources, treatment, and freedom. In the video, Tom Dart pledged that “we will never get rid of mail altogether”, but they are already doing way too much: it’s bad enough you already can’t get newspapers or hardcover books, and the petty rejections are only increasing. In many jails and prisons where tablets are introduced with alternative electronic messaging and visits, prison systems end up terminating physical mail and visits: but this is Chicago, and we aren’t going for that here without a fight. Action needs to be taken to defend this ongoing destruction of rights, and prevent CCJ from a blanket ban on physical mail or books.
“3 Book Rule “and Massive Book Shakedowns: After the Kroger v. Dart lawsuit challenging the 3-book rule was denied by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals last April, CCJ administrators wasted no time in enforcing this draconian limit by going cell to cell to steal “extra” books. Many legal books have been confiscated or destroyed, as well as other personal possessions such as family photos and artwork. Supposedly religious books aren’t counted towards the limit, and people in Division 6 were told legal books don’t count as well. But this is all subject to the personal whims of whatever guard wants to enforce and interpret the rules, with no safeguards protecting legal books and no due process to appeal the confiscation or to send the materials home. The Koger lawsuit was not just a challenge of the 3-book limitation itself, but also the handling of the confiscated books: guards tossed Koger’s books without options to send home or choose which books they took. CCJ intentionally repeated this disrespect during the recent shakedowns. Part of the punishment is psychological – they want people to feel the fear and uncertainty that at any given moment, books or anything else you might have can be arbitrarily stolen. But it also is preventing people who often spend months or years in pretrial confinement from preparing a legal defense against one of the most corrupt police and court systems in the country.
How does taking away one’s reading materials contribute to the “safety and security” or “legitimate penological interests”? Cook County Sheriff says forget what you heard about education and rehabilitation : they argued in Court that that books “can be used to set fires, as weapons or makeshift body armor, hide contraband, send coded messages between inmates, jam cell doors or locks, cover windows, clog toilets and ventilation systems, cluttering and tripping hazards, and cause disputes between inmates over books”.
These restrictions violate constitutional rights, have no reasonable penological interest, and fail basic standards of common sense and human decency,. Nevertheless, the Courts always seem to find a way to twist legal interpretations when it suits the ends of the prison system. The four factor test of Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78 (1987) to determine whether a prison restriction should be allowed to override constitutional rights:
1. Whether there is a “valid, rational connection” between the regulation and the legitimate governmental interest used to justify it;
2. Whether there are alternative means for the prisoner to exercise the right at issue;
3. The impact that the desired accommodation will have on guards, other inmates, and prison resources ;
4. The presence or absence of “ready alternatives,” where the presence of ready alternatives make it more likely that a regulation is unreasonable, while the absence make it less likely that the regulation is unreasonable.
CCJ did not ban religious materials because that would be an infringement on a person’s religious rights, fought in cases like Cooper v. Pate, 378 U.S. 546 (1964), Cruz v. Beto, 405 U.S. 319 (1972), and Sostre v. McGinnis. A prison regulation that infringes on inmates’ constitutional rights therefore is valid only if it is “reasonably related to legitimate penological interests.” Turner, 482 U.S. at 88, 107 S.Ct. 2254. “[A] regulation cannot be sustained where the logical connection between the regulation and the asserted goal is so remote as to render the policy arbitrary or irrational.” Id. at 89, 107 S.Ct. 2254. What is the valid rationality of the book policy when religious books can be unlimited but other materials are severely constricted? Do we have to declare a new religion that worships the law so individuals can have materials to prepare their cases?
Are there alternative means to receive enough reading materials in CCJ? Absolutely not. Our recent FOIA request shows that there was $0 spending on library and law library reading materials at Cook County Jail in the year 2022. All books were sent in “by donation”, so from family members and groups like ours. As for access to the “law library”, you have to fill out a request form specifying your query, and hope that a few weeks later the five pages of printouts you get back will be enough to prepare your case.
The irrational stripping away of the possessions of community members locked up has caused a huge divide amongst guards and the people they harm. Reading materials encourage a healthier environment and book programs like Midwest Books To Prisoners give indigent people inside the ability to obtain reading materials free of charge, removing some financial burden put on the individuals detained in CCJ as well as the burden put on their families who are trying to help maintain the mental health of people living in uninhabitable living conditions.
The Digitization Creep: After just a few months of CCJ distributing over 3000 tablets, they enabled the GTL “Telmate Getting Out” app with electronic “email” functionality. When these prison profiteers come around, often physical mail and visits are phased out and replaced with these heavily restricted, and expensive texting services.
Smart Communications, Securus, TextBehind, Pigeonly, Global Tel-Link and more: the lucrative business of mail scanning is spreading rampantly often without constitutional considerations, congressional oversight, or public comment. It happened in half the state prison systems, several federal prisons, and hundreds of local jails.
Authorities claim these outsourced mail security services are necessary to prevent drugs from being sent in, but are unable to show evidence it works (ie reports after five years of SmartCommunications digitizing the entire PA DOC’s mail, drugs still proliferate).
While people need unrestricted access to technology and the internet, this ain’t it. All kinds of problems with these tablets replacing physical mail. The costs: they’re nickel and diming the incarcerated for basic text and phone services that would otherwise be nearly free if it weren’t run by profiteering contractors. The quality is trash: margins clipped, pages out of order, limits on quantity or sizes, etc. Unlike physical mail, if you ever get transferred to another institution you may lose all your mail stored on the tablets. Availability is also an issue, equipment breaks, is often unavailable during lockdowns, and access can be revoked for discipline as if communication is a privilege not a right.
Expanding the Panopticon: There are other selling points that make it attractive to prison administrators: surveillance and data collection – not only storing all communications in searchable databases for police, but they also spy on contacts they correspond with – expanding the carceral panopticon not only to those captive in their dungeons, but to the rest of us in the so-called free world!
CIDNET, a “communications company” similar to Securus, Smart Communications, and GTL, describes themselves as “a social platform, an investigative monitoring tool, and a communications infrastructure, depending on who you are”. In CIDNETs 2021 catalog, they advertise their “features” for staff as revenue and monitoring:
“Mail cues are monetized by many of our clients, and they can be a significant source of additional funding for your facility. Monitoring tools: The Cidnet Intelligence Suite is a treasure trove of tools that help facilities solve more cases and prevent future crimes. These tools are designed to continuously monitor large amounts of inmate communications data, so corrections staff don’t have to. Time previously spent randomly monitoring inmate communications will transition to time spent analyzing actionable intelligence that the system provides. “
Smart Communications highlighting their surveillance capabilities:
“authorized staff with the ability to monitor and review all electronic messages and attachments sent through the system, except those items that are deemed privileged under law (i.e. attorney/client confidentiality). We will maintain a record of all electronic messages sent through the SmartInmate system for a period of seven years from the time the message was sent. SmartInmate has many built-in investigative features that make the system an invaluable intelligence-gathering, crime solving and powerful crime prevention tool. For example, SmartInmate can automatically monitor and send instant notifications when messages containing investigator-defined keywords or names are transmitted, or inmates being shadowed under investigation send or receive messages or connect with a new public user. Furthermore, SmartInmate messages are fully keyword searchable. Keywords are highlighted in the search results to allow investigators to quickly locate content of interest. SmartInmate also collects statistics, data and information on public users in the community that are in communication with inmates at your agency. Information such as connected inmates, phone numbers, IP-addresses, email addresses, credit card and bank information, GPS locations, devices used and more”.
GTL is also spying on people who dare use their app to communicate with loved ones:
“Call IQ application will alert you via email if a peron utter a specific phrase or mentions a certain topic during a call… Calls with greater fluctuation in sentiment or emotion can lead investigators to calls where the inmate or called party shows signs of stress. .. Location IQ uses powerful and accurate Carrier Tower and GPS location based services to access a called party’s location using GPS, offering both latitude/longitude coordinates and proximity to the given facility… ”
Rather than stopping the flow of contraband, these prison administrators are conspiring with third party profiteers to monitor, censor, slow and obstruct the mail, narrowing the form and content of communications allowed to only these dystopian corporate sandboxes. Instead of addressing the root causes of addiction, poverty and criminalization, they’re accusing the entire planet of being a criminal entity trying to smuggle drugs into prison, blaming mail, books and everyone else except for the people profiting from the cycle of incarceration. We’re not going for it! Tom Dart, leave the mail alone!