In the spring, the Illinois House is set to take up a bill aimed at turning all prisons in the State of Illinois Paperless. This is all coming from Republican Legislators and AFSCME, the correctional officers union. These new rules will ban all mail from private individuals until it is digitized; it will also ban books and newspapers.
Why would they do this? Ostensibly, they will tell you that it is necessary in the name of public safety: keeping IDOC and its employees and residents safe.
One of the things that happened in the wake of legalizing marijuana is that a lot of synthetic cannabinoid products are being produced. This is part of the cannabis market that is largely unregulated. One of the products that has come forward is called K2. It is a synthetic form of cannabinoid that will still get you high without the form of THC in regular marijuana. K2 is widely sold in gas stations among other places. K2 gets sprayed on paper and these pieces of paper are either eaten or smoked, and that’s how prisoners get high. They cut them into small pieces called “strips”. This is part of the excuse that AFSCME and the Republican Legislators use for wanting to implement the Paperless prison system.
The other reason that is put forth is that it is needed for the safety of correctional officers who handle the mail. There have been numerous reports in local and nationwide media about officers in mailrooms in prisons throughout the country who have been made sick or died due to drug soaked paper and things like that. There was one here in the State of Illinois that made the news at a downstate prison called Shawnee Correctional Center. Six correctional officers and two prisoners “experienced medical symptoms” while sorting mail. The prison was put on lockdown: mailrooms across the state were alerted, and all mail in that prison was temporarily stopped.
This sounds like a reasonable response, right? However, the Hazardous Material team that responded to the prison found no drugs on any paper, nor on the clothes of the officers. There is no evidence of any drugs or contraband being found causing a medical emergency.
They use generic terms like what was reported on WSIL TV about an incident in Menard Correctional Center in September of 2024. Part of the report says “One staff from the mailroom started exhibiting symptoms”, it goes on: “Another employee exhibited symptoms and was taken to the hospital”. Exhibiting symptoms? Symptoms of what? The report goes on to say that “All impacted staff were treated and released”. You know what that means? It means they were politely told ‘nothing is wrong with you, you can go’.
It was reported in “The Southern” that in August of 2024 “two officers had an elevated heart rate and dizziness after having responded to an inmate medical situation where possible overdose was suspected”. An elevated heart rate and dizziness after responding to an emergency medical situation? That seems like a normal reaction to me. They are instead trying to tie it to a possible drug contamination without any evidence at all.
They use these generic terms like “exhibiting symptoms” and trying to tie every situation to drugs in order to further their narrative. The sad truth is they treat every medical emergency like a drug overdose no matter who it is.
In June of 2024 at Stateville Correctional Center, my friend who lived next door to me named Michael Broadway, had such a medical emergency. It took 20 minutes for the nurse to show up to his cell. When she got there, all she wanted to do was hit him with Narcan. When the first one didn’t work, she hit him again. The IDOC said Michael died of a drug overdose, however, the autopsy showed that he died of an Asthma attack exacerbated by extreme heat. His family is now suing IDOC.
Nowhere in the State of Illinois has there been an incident of a corrections worker being made sick or dying of any drug soaked paper. Even holding, or touching the deadly drug Fentanyl will not result in overdosing or being made sick. Touching or holding the drug does not harm you. It is a narrative that AFSCME keeps pushing, but it simply isn’t true.
These synthetic drugs aren’t as dangerous as they are being made out to be. How do I know? For the last 23 years I was in Stateville Correctional Center before it closed in October. Strips, as they were called, had permeated the prison. Some guy did get caught, and they were punished. But mostly, prison staff didn’t seem to care much. Many guys smoked these drugs; you could smell the smoke in the air all the time.
This wasn’t a problem the prison cared to address. Prisons are mostly concerned with prisoner violence, either violence towards each other or violence towards staff. As long as guys weren’t doing those things, they didn’t care if prisoners smoked themselves into oblivion. I don’t smoke or get high, but I was always around it, and was forced to breathe in secondhand smoke in these enclosed spaces. I never “exhibited symptoms”, whatever that means, and neither did any of the countless other prisoners who were around it, or who did it, nor did any of the correctional officers who were around it.
Going paperless is costly, and simply does not work. In 2020, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections began sending all prisoner mail to a company called TextBehind in Maryland that scans the mail and sends a digital copy to prisoners. This costs the Wisconsin Department of Corrections over $1 million a year. Doing this for IDOC will needlessly cost taxpayers millions of dollars.
There is evidence as well to show that going paperless does not work. WisconsinWatch.org reported that in the year 2021, the year Wisconsin began restricting mail, there were 49 incidents of drugs being found on paper. Thus far in 2024, there have been 55 incidents. A Marshall Project investigation from 2021 found that restricting mail did not curb drugs found in Texas prisons. The Patriot News reported last year that after banning physical mail in 2018, the number of Pennsylvania prisoners who tested positive on random drug tests substantially increased.
Do you want to know why going paperless and restricting mail doesn’t work? Because most drugs are brought into the prison by the people who work here. In Stateville, staff were routinely walked out and fired for bringing in drugs, selling cell phones, or having sex with prisoners.
In Cook County Jail last January, a nurse was arrested for bringing in drug soaked paper to her prisoner boyfriend. In March, a CCJ commissary worker with a private company was arrested trying to smuggle in drugs.
In 2023 in Wisconsin, prosecutors charged nine Waupun prison workers, including a former warden, in a federally investigated staff smuggling ring. I can tell you from experience that many staff members in Stateville, both correctional officers and other staff, have been caught smuggling things into the prison.
Make no mistake, this paperless agenda will affect more than a prisoner’s personal letters. It will also stop prisoners from being able to purchase books or magazines, even newspapers. IDOC has already severely curtailed our ability to get books. Everyone knows that buying used books is cheaper than buying new books. However, IDOC has employed a policy that will not allow in any books with highlighted passages, underlined sentences, or stains of any kind. This seriously limits your ability to get used books, forcing you (or your family) to spend money on new books. Sadly, not everyone can afford to purchase new books. The drugs they claim to be trying to stop aren’t highlighted or underlined, so these restrictions make little sense other than trying to stop books from coming in at all.
Books are a huge part of the prison culture: good books, both fiction and non-fiction, are passed around. You whittle away the hours in a place like this, and many men do that by reading. Once I set my mind to try to become a better person, I read anything and everything I could get my hands on. Reading books helped me to get on a better path: they helped me grow and become self-rehabilitated. Some books are so valuable in prison, I’ve seen them used as currency. That’s how valuable books can be in a place like this, and they are trying to take that away.
Some men in this place also write books. I myself have been writing a book. Other men, like my friend Michael Broadway who died, are already published authors. He wrote and self-published a semi-autobiographical book about growing up in Chicago called “One Foot In”. Other guys have published poetry books or memoirs. This bill would stop all of that. You would stop incarcerated men and women from becoming better people. Worse yet, you would stop them from expressing themselves.
This will also hugely impact education and learning in prison. IDOC does not have any higher learning or a degree bearing education. Many men take correspondence courses such as Blackstone Career Institute which upon completion certifies men and women as paralegals anywhere in the country. There are also various colleges and Universities across the country that offer correspondence courses like Adams State or the University of Colorado at Pueblo. If this bill passes, none of these things will be available to the men and women in IDOC anymore.
It is not just limited to correspondence courses either. There are higher education programs scattered across the state like the Northwestern Prison Education Program (NPEP), or Lewis University. These programs largely rely on paper printed articles instead of books. NPEP is largely funded by donations and grants: it would cost thousands of dollars to pay for course books for everyone. Many of the course materials are printed. This would also stop. The guys in these programs would not be able to do their coursework. It would have the effect of shutting down higher education in prison. Is that really in the interest of public safety?
We have been able to purchase tablets through a company called Global Tel-Link (GTL). The tablets have apps for music, news and podcasts, which you have to pay a subscription or. It also has emails which you also pay o, and ebooks which are free .The reason that the book app is free is because they are all public domain materials which are older than 70 years. That means any science of any kind is old and no longer applies. There is no recent history, no self-help books, or anything that is contemporary.
You know what the tablet does not have? It does not have the ability to hold any writing whatsoever, other than a 2000 character email. You cannot write letters, poems, songs, or books. You cannot write your school papers or your own legal motions. It doesn’t even spellcheck. Nor can it hold pictures or drawings that small children do for their parents. You cannot create art on it. If this bill passes, you cannot even use paper to draw or paint.
Moira Marquis of PEN America said “If you are going to limit somebody’s First Amendment rights excessively, you really should have a very strong burden of proof that not only is this necessary, but also effective.” This is neither necessary nor effective: this is IDOC blaming families and the people they incarcerate for the problems their staff can’t or won’t address.