(from the Midwest Prison Censorship Update 2025)
An all-too-familiar playbook: the media parrots press releases from prison staff without any independent investigation. Was there any evidence of these drug exposures? Hospital records or drug test results from the affected officers? Uncritical journalists and a lack of public data enables prison staff to restrict books and mail on dishonest narratives.
However, through a FOIA request, we now have datasets for all drug confiscations within IDOC from 2023-2024 and all drug exposure incidents within IDOC in 2024. This confiscation data includes the date, facility, description, location found (in mail, in cell, on person), field drug test results, whether it was sent to Illinois State Police for accurate drug testing, and the results of those tests. The exposure data contains date, time, facility, whether it was staff or a prisoner, whether Narcan was used, and whether they went to the hospital. More comprehensive statistical analysis is ongoing: we’ve posted the data on our website for others to review and are sharing some of our initial findings.
IDOC’s data confirms that Republican politicians and prison guard unions are deliberately misleading the public about these supposed hospitalizations, inaccurately blaming books and the mail.
Out of the total 1493 alleged drug confiscations in a two year period, only 30.1% was ever found in the mail. Only 5 mailroom confiscations of Fentanyl was ever confirmed by ISP testing in this period. Of all the confiscations that ISP confirmed contained drugs, over 90% was synthetic cannabinoids or THC/Delta, which cannot produce the overdoses or symptoms officers claim. Even with Fentanyl, medical experts repeatedly prove how it is impossible for an incidental drug reaction by simple handling of the drug (and in any case mail staff are supposed to use masks and gloves).
Their rush to confiscate or reject anything that looks suspicious has drastic consequences for the confined, especially for those currently fighting cases in court. Out of the 88 pieces of legal mail confiscated, only 40 were confirmed by ISP to have actually contained drugs: that means 48 pieces of Attorney-Client privileged mail was illegally opened, searched, copied, not given to the recipient who may have also been disciplined – all based on arbitrary suspicions and defective field tests.
Illinois uses the Sirchie Narc II for ‘presumptive testing’, which has been widely discredited for rampant false positives: regardless, IDOC relies on this initial testing to place people in solitary confinement, restricts communication and commissary rights, and affect good time / parole decisions. We’re also thinking of the thousands of books we sent that were rejected for ‘stains’ or ‘unusual discoloration’ that were rejected without any actual drug testing whatsoever.
IDOC works with Illinois State Police’s drug testing facility for actual drug test results: 65.6% of the confiscations either tested negative by ISP or IDOC never bothered to send it for accurate testing all.
What was not in the FOIA data was drug test results or medical diagnosis for the guards who sought hospitalization. Interestingly, the vast majority of all drug exposure incidents affecting guards occurred after July 2024. This data demonstrates that there was little to no correlation between any of these incidents and actual confirmations of drug-laced mail.
One such incident at Menard in early September where several guards were allegedly hospitalized had state senators Terri Bryant and Dan Fowler calling for an immediate suspension of all physical mail until they implement a scanning system. Read this ridiculous timeline of events out of a scifi novel:
Monday, 9/9, one staff member from the mailroom started exhibiting symptoms while opening mail and was transported to an outside hospital via ambulance. The remaining staff in the mailroom were then relocated to the facility’s warehouse. While in the warehouse, another mailroom employee exhibited symptoms and was transported to an outside hospital via ambulance. Subsequently, two other staff members, who were not in the mailroom, but came in contact with the first two mailroom employees, started exhibiting symptoms and were taken to the outside hospital via ambulance. Later, one mailroom staff member reported feeling ill and was transported to an outside hospital via state vehicle. Another mailroom staff member was taken to the hospital by state vehicle without symptoms for precautionary measures. All impacted staff were treated and released. A team consisting of members of the Illinois State Police (ISP), supported by members of the Illinois National Guard, were on-site to assist with testing items of concern in the mailroom. The investigation into the recent events at Menard are ongoing.
However, according to their own data, there was no drug confiscation in the mailroom at Menard on 9/9/2024. All week they put people on lockdown and sent search teams tearing up cells looking for scraps of paper. So many of these plague scare lockdowns, the data shows no results – just cops faking it.
Police and politicians are lying to justify harsh and unnecessary restrictions on the basic human right to communication, to read and write.