Missouri Prison Reform received the following message from a resident of a Missouri Prison.
The elimination of physical mail has stopped all of my mail from my family. My family is too poor to maintain a continuous correspondence so I only received a very nice birthday card every year. But now that does not come. They do not have the ability to use the Securus email system. So my only communication is phone calls that I pay for. Also since they eliminated physical mail there has been a dramatic increase in the amount of synthetic drugs on the yard. And an overwhelming number of what are called “episodes,” where people become unable to control themselves while under the influence. The episodes are so common that most of the time the people aren’t even getting violations, they’re just being placed in medical to sleep it off and sent back to the yard. I believe this dramatic increase is because the people incarcerated are so ostracized from their families and loved ones, because of the mail restrictions, that they are turning to the illicit substances on the yard to cope with the isolation and depression, especially since they already had a substance abuse problem. Also I just got sent to ad-seg and when the property room officer packed my property she took every single photograph that I owned and my entire photo album, even though policy states I can have 25 loose photos and they still sell photo albums. I no longer have any of my family photos and I will not be able to get them sent back in because of the mail restrictions. I have filed an IRR over this and am waiting for its disposition. But DOC never follows its own policy, especially JCCC.
