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- The Wisconsin Division of Corrections has banned donations of used books to prisoners in an effort to stop medication from coming into state prisons by means of secondhand books.
- Critics say the division is limiting inmates’ entry to info whereas failing to handle wider entry factors for medication, like jail workers.
- The division has moreover spent about $4 million on limiting prisoner-bound mail lately — rerouting it to Maryland, the place an organization scans mail and sends a digital copy to these incarcerated.
- A number of Wisconsin jail employees have confronted fees associated to drug smuggling lately.
The Wisconsin Division of Corrections has halted the work of a nonprofit that donated used books to prisoners for almost 20 years, calling it essential to stop medication from coming into state prisons by means of secondhand books.
The transfer is drawing pushback from leaders of the nonprofit Wisconsin Books to Prisoners and prisoner rights advocates. They are saying the division is limiting inmates’ entry to info whereas failing to slender wider entry factors for medication, like jail workers.
The used e book ban comes after Wisconsin rerouted prisoner-bound mail out of state within the title of blocking drug shipments — an effort that has value tens of millions but has had little seen impression on the numbers.
As they prohibit books and mail shipments, Wisconsin jail officers have shared much less about plans to cease jail staff from bringing in medication.
That’s regardless of final 12 months’s launch of a federal investigation into staff suspected of smuggling contraband into Waupun Correctional Establishment. Individually, a number of Wisconsin jail employees have confronted fees associated to drug smuggling lately.
Jail officers ban used e book donations
Wisconsin Books to Prisoners (WBTP), a small volunteer-run group, has despatched over 70,000 free books to state prisons since 2006.
Camy Matthay, the group’s director and co-founder, stated she was alarmed in August to be taught state prisons would not settle for the group’s used books.
“The choice to bar WBTP from sending books unnecessarily restricts incarcerated peoples’ entry to useful instructional assets, notably when many amenities endure from underfunded, outdated, or non-existent library service,” Matthay’s group wrote on social media when saying the ban.
“We simply wish to ship books to prisoners, that’s all,” Matthay stated in an interview.
The group inspected all books earlier than sending to make sure they met jail “clear copy” standards: no highlighting, underlining or marks of any sort, she stated.
In an Aug. 16 e-mail to the nonprofit, Division of Grownup Establishments Administrator Sarah Cooper wrote that her company isn’t involved with the group itself, “however with those that would impersonate your group for nefarious means.”
“Unhealthy actors” might ship packages and books laced with medication that “seem like despatched from the Youngster Help Company, the IRS, the State Public Defender’s Workplace, the Division of Justice and particular person attorneys,” she wrote.
The corrections division introduced its newest ban of used books in January. Then Oshkosh Correctional Establishment officers in February and March detected medication in three shipments of books purporting to be from Wisconsin Books to Prisoners, spokesperson Beth Hardtke informed reporters Monday in an e-mail.
That was information to Matthay, she stated Monday. The division by no means notified the group in regards to the incidents, nor did Cooper’s August e-mail point out them.
Newest effort to limit e book donations
This isn’t the primary time restrictions have threatened the group’s work.
Jail officers cited drug issues in halting the nonprofit’s donations in 2008 earlier than ultimately agreeing to let it ship solely new books, following ACLU of Wisconsin intervention. In 2018, the division clarified that the nonprofit, as an accepted vendor, may ship used books as long as they had been clear copies. It reaffirmed that call in 2021.
Hardtke stated the newest restrictions don’t particularly goal Wisconsin Books to Prisoners. They’re as a substitute a part of a broader ban on all secondhand e book deliveries. Prisoners should obtain new books despatched immediately from a writer or retailer with a receipt, she stated.
Matthay’s group can not sustain with calls for whereas being restricted to solely new books, she stated.
The coverage will chill prisoners’ entry to info, stated Moira Marquis, a senior supervisor on the freedom of expression advocacy group PEN America. Marquis authored the report “Studying Between the Bars,” which detailed state e book restrictions nationwide.
Wisconsin Books to Prisoners despatched donated books to inmates totally free to handle a selected barrier to info. Many prisoners, who in 2023 made as little as 5 cents per hour in jobs behind bars, can not afford to purchase new books from retailers.
“Should you’re going to restrict any individual’s First Modification rights excessively, you actually ought to have a really sturdy burden of proof that not solely is that this essential, but additionally that it’s efficient,” Marquis stated.
Wisconsin Watch requested the corrections division for proof that necessitated the ban.
“Sadly, lately people have repeatedly used paper, together with letters and books, as a strategy to attempt to smuggle medication into DOC establishments,” Hardtke stated in an e-mail.
The division since 2019 has flagged 214 incidents of medication being discovered on paper, representing 1 / 4 of all 881 contraband incidents flagged throughout that point, based on figures Hardtke supplied.
“DOC is constant the dialog with Wisconsin Books to Prisoners within the hopes we will come to an settlement to assist fulfill the studying requests of these in our care and accomplish that safely,” Hardtke wrote.
Matthay in August requested the division if offering monitoring info on its packages may assist it confirm that e book shipments had been certainly coming from Wisconsin Books to Prisoners.
The division has but to reply, she stated Monday.
Thousands and thousands spent rerouting jail mail to Maryland
The corrections division’s broader efforts to limit mail don’t seem to have slowed the circulation of medication. The division counted extra incident experiences of medication being discovered on paper (55) to date in 2024 than it did in 2021 (49), the 12 months it overhauled its mailing system, the figures Hardtke supplied present.
Not all incident experiences flagged as drug-related end up to really be so, Hardtke famous, and the figures might not account for drug-related incidents logged in separate medical or conduct experiences.
In December 2021, the division started rerouting all prisoner-bound mail to Maryland, the place an organization referred to as TextBehind scans each bit of mail and sends a digital copy to these incarcerated. The division has paid almost $4 million for these providers since they started, based on info Wisconsin Watch obtained by means of an open data request.
Some incarcerated folks informed Wisconsin Watch the lack of bodily mail has elevated their emotions of isolation. They will not maintain the identical handwritten letters and pictures their family members despatched; photocopies aren’t the identical.
“I don’t get to scent the fragrance on a letter. I don’t get the precise drawings my child sends me. It takes away from the sentimental worth of it,” stated a Waupun prisoner who requested to stay nameless for concern of retribution.
A variety of analysis has proven that sustaining connections to family members improves the probability {that a} prisoner will reintegrate into society and keep away from recidivism.
The prisoner stated the mail coverage hasn’t stopped the circulation of medication into jail.
“Each day I scent weed,” he stated. “They’re making an attempt guilty us for the medication, but when the administration doesn’t maintain their workers accountable for his or her actions, it received’t clear up the issue.”
Lockdowns don’t cease drug circulation
Wisconsin lately has locked down prisons, limiting inmate motion and privileges to alleviate staffing shortages. Medicine stored flowing even after in-person visits and unsolicited mail to prisoners stopped.
The division counted 214 complete drug-related contraband incident experiences in 2024, up from 142 a 12 months earlier and 164 in 2022.
Final 12 months, a U.S. Division of Justice investigation right into a doable drug and contraband smuggling ring prompted the state to position 11 Waupun jail staff on depart. In September, a former Waupun jail worker was convicted of smuggling contraband into prisons underneath the guise of finishing repairs.
And in October 2023, three months after state officers requested federal authorities to research staff-led smuggling inside Waupun’s jail, 30-year-old Tyshun Lemons was discovered lifeless from fentanyl poisoning. In June, prosecutors criminally charged 9 Waupun jail employees, together with the previous warden, following a number of inmate deaths, together with Lemons’.
Not less than two dozen correctional officers have been caught smuggling contraband into Wisconsin prisons since 2019, based on public data obtained by the advocacy group Women of SCI and shared with Wisconsin Watch.
Wisconsin Watch is awaiting division data requested Sept. 5 detailing extra info associated to latest drug incidents in its grownup amenities.
Mail restrictions scrutinized in different states
A number of states have restricted books and mail since 2015, citing drug smuggling issues, Marquis stated. In the meantime, prisoners have more and more relied on digital tablets, which have include new limits on what they’ll learn, Marquis stated.
Have such restrictions restricted the circulation of medication in these states? Not essentially, information experiences have discovered.
A Texas Tribune/Marshall Challenge investigation in 2021 discovered that curbing mail didn’t curb medication present in Texas prisons. Guards wrote up much more prisoners for medication after the coverage change. Prisoners and staff reported that workers had been most accountable for smuggling medication.
Pennsylvania’s jail officers banned bodily mail in 2018 after blaming a collection of workers sicknesses on medication allegedly despatched by mail. However lower than 5 years later, the variety of prisoners who examined optimistic on random drug assessments considerably elevated, The Patriot Information reported final 12 months.
Florida in 2021 stopped all paper mail from coming into prisons, citing 35,000 contraband objects present in mail between January 2019 and April 2021. However these represented lower than 2% of all such objects discovered within the prisons throughout that interval, the Tampa Bay Occasions reported.
Wisconsin in 2022 issued new screening necessities for folks coming into prisons and added metallic detectors at factors of entry. However one Waupun jail employee stated screeners at entrances don’t routinely examine staff’ luggage or lunches, permitting medication to move by means of undetected. The jail employee requested anonymity as a result of he’s not approved to talk to media.
“If it had been me making an attempt to cease medication, the very first thing I might do is provide you with a system the place staff are screened higher,” he stated.
To Rebecca Aubart, govt director of Women of SCI, the secondhand e book ban is an instance of how insurance policies touted as security measures hurt incarcerated folks.
“To me this coverage is one other method DOC is blaming households and the folks they incarcerate for the issues their workers can’t or received’t deal with,” she stated.
“It’s a false narrative that will get repeated, and when it turns into coverage, the false narrative will get bolstered.”
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