Midwest Prison Censorship Update 2025: Exposing the IDOC Mail Scanning Scam

View the zine: Screen PDF – Printable PDF

View the Prison Censorship Survey results

Individual articles:

“Stop Mail Scanning in Illinois” by Anthony Ehlers
“The Censorship of Ideas is a Form of Psychological Warfare: A Message from the Diversionary Treatment Unit” by Hybachi LeMar
Mail Scamming: IDOC’s Own Data Exposes how Politicians and Guard Unions are Lying about Drugs in the Mail

Download the FOIA request data (zip): 2023-2024 IDOC Drug Confiscations, 2024 Drug Exposures

Prison censorship is a front in the fascist american project. For the millions buried by the largest prison system on the planet, we know that access to communication and reading materials remain one of the only ways people behind bars can maintain humanity. Prison is censorship, a system of walls and borders that criminalizes people and ideas: a system we are determined to break by building bridges of solidarity – through sharing books and publishing zines.

Coinciding with the fascistic expansion of police and cop city projects, the prison censorship machine has rapidly marched on, consuming the majority of local, state and federal facilities. Played-out “war on drugs” fear mongering is why most people behind bars no longer receive physical mail: books are banned under cover of “content-neutral” and “publisher-only” restrictions, and private monopolies experiment with dystopian tablet technologies to monitor and profit from all communications.

Illinois has been one of the last holdouts until last year when prison copagandists began another all-too-familiar disinformation campaign. Guards are staging drug exposure hospitalization stunts to take away physical mail – incidents easily disproved as impossible by medical experts and according to IDOC’s own confiscation and exposure data. Unlike other states, this battle is being waged at capitol: multiple bills for and against mail scanning are being debated in Springfield. IDOC has not made any announcements yet, but has signed a new phone/email/tablet contract with ICSolutions: Illinois could fall to all-digital mail unless we organize now to stop it.

One voice that has not been heard from are those behind bars who are bearing the brunt of their draconian machinations. We made sure to share their plans to thousands of our incarcerated correspondents throughout IDOC, asking for comments and strategies on how to fight back and providing information on the bills and the addresses to write congress. Throughout these pages you’ll hear directly how mail censorship affects life behind bars: and special appreciations to the brave souls writing us, refusing to be silenced.

We are determined to stop mail scanning and book bans in Illinois: we share these tools and updates, seeking comrades to help break down the panopticon through underground networks of paper and print. Free the books, free the mail, free the people – free them all!

Other prison censorship materials:

Zine: End Book Bans and Mail Censorship at Cook County Jail! (web readable) (imposed for print)
Zine: Circumventing Prison Tech Censorship (web readable) (imposed for print)
Zine: Campaign Against Prison Censorship and Book Banning (web readable) (imposed for print)
Zine: Midwest Books to Prisoners Community Zine 2023 (censorship survey) (web readable) (imposed for print)
Zine: Don’t Step Back, Fight Back! by Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin (web readable) (imposed for print)