39.-perils-of-prison-mail-digitization.pdf
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Peres
PRISON MAIL
DIGITIZATION

THE FINAL STRAW
RADIO SHOW

12°12°21
Leigh Lassiter from prison books collective in Durham, North
|, a nonprofit project that sends zines and books to pris-
‘ners in Alabama in North Carolina prisons and jails comes on
this week to tell us about recent changes by the NCDPS to use
the private company TextBehind to scan all incoming and out-
going mail track, their contents surveil the outside users and
mailers, and to make a profit on an already indigent popula-
tion. We also talk about the work of sending literature, to in-
carcerated folks privatization and digitization of other services,
and what literature gets rejected. More about the press books
collective at PrisonBooks.Info or check out their linktree





You can also check out local books to prisoners projects in your
area that you could get involved with by visiting PrisonBooks.
Org/PrisonBooksNetwork. There're also a couple of really
‘good articles from The Intercept about this and related surveil-
lance services topics within you as prisons and jails.

Search for this interview title at https://thefinalstrawradio.
noblogs.org/ to find links to further resources on this topic,
featured music, the audio version, and files for printing copies
of this episode.

Cover art and design by Alan Giberson,

The Final Straw Radio / Prison Mail Digitization

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20f 18

‘TFSR: Could you please introduce yourself with whatever name, pro-
noun, and affiliations you want to share?

Leigh Lassiter: Yeah, my name is Leigh Lassiter. I am fine with any pro-
nouns. I work with Prison Books Collective publishing distribution,
based out of Durham and North Carolina, However, I speak on my own
behalfas an activist and an individual rather than a representative of Pris
‘on Books.



TFSR: Cool. And could you talk a little bit about Prison Books? How
Jong has it been around and what yall do?

LL: Yeah, we started in 2006. I was not there then. But we have gotten
touch with some of the people who were involved in the original starting
oft. It started in someone's garage. And it has grown, although we're kind
of in the equivalent of a garage stil. But as I said, in 2006, it wasn’t rec-
ognized as a nonprofit until about a decade later. But we have been able
to keep it going. We've just been sending books to North Carolina and
Alabama, and zines across the country for all that time. We meet every
week to answer the letter requests and send packages out to people and
talk to each other. It's not as anarchist as it once was at its roots, more
service-based space now, there is a variety of political opinions. But as a
‘group, we still share the vision of alleviating the tremendous cruel pres-
sures of the prison industrial complex on the incarcerated people that we
serve, and generally feel that incarceration in this country is done poorly
and has overkill. If we weren't needed, if our mission was served either
by prisons or there weren't prisons to incarcerate people, we would prefer
that. But while people are locked up, we get them all the books that we



TFSR: And what kind of requests do you get? Is it for technical man-
uals, dictionaries, religious texts? There's a lot of religious groups, for
instance, that do outreach into prisons and send in materials that tend
to have their specific religious bent and view on the world, because
they're missionizing? What does the normal packaging party or pack-
aging event look like for Prison Books?





LL: In regards to what the event looks like, we just pick up the individ-
ual letters and start reading for what they request. Sometimes we do get

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requests for specific books and specific authors that we have in donated
stocks. So its rare that we can answer someone's specific request with the
exact book that they want. Sometimes it happens, though. We just look
around to find something usually, under 2 pounds, two books that we
send, print off some zines and staple them. Fill in an invoice, send our
information, write alittle note, and pack it up neatly and tape it up to be
taken to the post office later on.

People request all sorts of books. The most common being a dic-
tionary or legal dictionary, and DIY sort of things and career books are
often very frequently requested. A lot of people want to start food trucks
or build their own houses, or learn to weld or repair cars, do plumbing
and carpentry, that sort of thing. Which is extremely understandable for
both jobs inside of prison and outside for whenever they get out. Those,
of course, are very hard to find. We often get a lot of requests for coloring
books and drawing books, lots of thrillers, biographies, and autobiogra-
phies of, particularly, African-American activists. We have everything. So
wwe try to send everything from classics, to how to start your own business,
or histories about things, rock stars’ biographies. It’s whatever we can get.
As I said, this specificity of requests can vary from “please send me some
books” or people misunderstanding our mission and just saying, “I'd like
to sign up for your book club, just send me books every month”, Then we
have to say, “Oh, you have to write it every time, we have a limit of how
many books we can send, but you can request them”, We have some pub-
lishers that we dealt with who would occasionally give us a whole box of
books that they want to donate for a cause. Usually, because the subject.
matter has to do with prison or social justice. We'll try to send those to
the people who seem interested. But a lot of it is volunteers trying to read
what fits their needs most. Because we can only send so many so quickly
to people. And of course, usually prisons only allow them to have so many
ata time. So there’ a little bit of art to figuring out how to get them what
they want. I believe in the questions you sent over, you also asked what,
wasn't allowed, if you want me to talk about that?



TFSR: Yeah, that'd be super helpful.



LL: We mostly send to North Carolina state prisons. And this is true for
Alabama prisons, too. However, for the state prisons, anything that can
do with tattooing is not allowed. Nudity is not allowed. They say “artful”
nudity like Michelangelo or something would be allowed in, but in my

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experience, any nudity is not allowed, because that line is gray enough
that they just err on the side of “No, we're not going to let that in’ Things
that are gang-related or could enable crime in whatever way they interpret
are not allowed in, Hardcovers are occasionally allowed in, but it depends
on the prison, so we just don’t carry them because trying to keep track of
where we can send certain books is just a real time-drain. Spiral-bound
books usually aren't because they could take the spirals out and use them
for whatever. Those are the main restrictions, but we still get occasionally
weird bannings and rejections very often from jails more so than state
prisons. Federal prisons are at the level of state prisons in terms of what
they allow. Jails have the worst policies, generally speaking, it’s just sort of
determined by the warden in charge there. If you want to talk later about
some of the rejections that we've gotten over the last couple of years, I can
speak to that, because I usually handle the appeals process as it exists.



‘TFSR: Yeah, I would like to hear about that.

Td also like to hear though, you're filling a need. I get a picture
that at a certain point, maybe in the 1950s or 60s or 70s, that prisons
maybe didn't always have - it is dependent on the prison ~ but prisons
had a more robust legal library for people to research their cases, or
for writing appeals, or more literature, that at some point, education
as a part of the “rehabilitation” part of prisons was a bit more funded
and a bit more focused. And so a project like yours may be - unless a
group had a specific ideological mission of like, “we want to get more
‘Muslim books in the prison, or we don’t want to get more pagan books
in the prison” ~ maybe there wouldn't be as much of a demand. But
that’s changed. And I wonder if you could give a sense, as you under-
stand it, of what prisons libraries look like, and what prisoners’ access
to educational resources or reading for pleasure looks like in North
Carolina prisons.



LL: I will try to the best of my abilities. I have not seen a prison library,
but we hear about them pretty frequently. I should mention that doing
the COVID pandemic, which is still ongoing, libraries have often been
shut down. We've heard that across the state many state prisons have shut
down their libraries, or that sometimes they shut down visiting the librar-
ies and then had a cart they took around, but maybe the person who took
the cart around died of COVID. And then no one is there to take the cart
around. So some people told us we are the only access point for getting

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new literature right now, So right now it is in a particularly dire state in
North Carolina.

However, in general prison libraries, I can’t speak to the 1950s.
But given the boom of the incarcerated population, I'm not surprised by
the amount of need that is not being addressed by libraries in prisons,
particularly legal needs. We get a lot of requests where people are either
suing the state or trying to appeal their own case or going through other
cases, and they have access to almost no legal help. They can’t commu-
nicate effectively or to their satisfaction with their attorneys, if they even
have one yet, they don't understand all the terminology or what they have
to do. We have an extremely limited stock, as you might imagine, and pa-
perback up-to-date specific accessible law books are not widely provided
and easily accessible by us. We try our best and the number one thing on
‘our wish list is always the intro to criminal law and defending yourself
If anyone looks at the Prison Books wishlist that we have up, but we go
through those extremely quickly. People are very poorly informed by the
system about their rights and the ways that they can appeal or sue and try
to protect themselves. So that’s, unfortunately, something we see a lot of,
but that we, as just a small group of volunteers sending books for educa-
tion, entertainment don't really have to resources for, and there's a huge
need for legal help within the prisons,

It’s something that you mentioned before that Ihhad forgotten, the
religious outreach. I'll say that we do get not a huge amount of requests
for spiritual and religious literature, As you said, there are lots of organi-
zations willing to provide that, and no other kinds of books but literature
about that. We do get requests often for religions that do not have as many
groups, who are less represented inside of prison, like Rastafarianism, pa-
ganism, satanism, that sort of thing, There’ often a pastor inside of a jail
or prison, and you're not going to have that for Rastafarianism or some-
thing.

‘TFSR: Can you talk a little bit about the stuff that that gets rejected?
I've spoken with other folks that do books to prisoners and hear about
books by Franz Fanon, or George Jackson, or Angela Davis getting de-
nied because the content relates to prison and is critical of prisons.
‘Whaat stuff gets kicked back to you and why?

LL: I wanted to add a little bit of perspective on rejections that we had
gotten. Firstly, zines, because we send zines all across the country, just



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as a glimpse into the reasons that institutions all over the country might
reject things. One of the most recent rejections that we got was of a liter-
ary magazine Words of Fire which has publications of art and literature
from incarcerated people across the country. And therefore, we think it's
very important that they also have access to read it all across the country,
whether they are authors or might want to be authors, We had a rejection
in Connecticut of it, because it was on printed paper and was not consid-
ered a real publication, And we've been doing several weeks of phone calls,
and some letter-writing to try to appeal this, Because they are worried
that “having anything beyond what looks to be easily printed or copied
paper will have inmates calling their families to send them copied paper,
or printed paper, straight out of books” And the mail then will be flood-
ed, and they won't be able to deal with all of the rejections and appeals of
rejections. We've had it also rejected before, from Florida when I was try-
ing to get it to an author we'd published because it supposedly contained
‘commercial content, which is incorrect. Because we don't get paid for any
of our services. And they also supposedly continue to quote “disallowed
content” with no description of what that would mean. That was in 2019.

Some of the other things that we've gotten rejected across the
country include the GURPS, the General Universal Role Playing System,
which we sent out, it was rejected from Texas for having fighting styles in
it, which, by the pages given, was referring to rolling dice for hitting an-
other character or doing damage or having a bomb go off as an example
for this role-playing system’s damage. We've also had rejections for sup-
posedly promoting insurrection or posing a threat to safety and security
for things like The Lectures On Liberation by Angela Davis. Florida is
definitely one state where it’s very bad to try to get things in. And we've
had things like Tai Chi being lumped into martial arts, for example, over,
this. Some of the other bannings: The Art of War has been consistently
requested and consistently banned in North Carolina. It's not currently
on the banned list, but we've still had so much trouble sending in the past
that we haven't challenged it this year, because of the number of rejections
‘we've gotten over the years in the past. The New Jim Crow was banned
but that was overturned in 2018 because it was a national outery about it.
And that being overturned actually got them to redo their system of how
they banned books. So they looked at that list again every year, and it
actually overturned, a lot of other things being banned. Although you can
tell from the banned list, including Twelve Years of Slave and Malcolm X
books and things like that, that they have not fully fixed the system, which



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some might argue shouldn't exist.

A lot of our rejections, as I said, aren’t bannings, they are actually
just blanket blocks that do not care about the content that you are trying,
to send. For example, we had a jail recently write that we do not accept
books on a package, despite having talked to them within a month about
them accepting our books, and having word given to us that they did stil,
Sometimes it just depends on who's in the mailroom. There was a feder-
al institution in the state that just rejected something and then I called
them, I was just told that was probably the other post and “I understand
what your packages are, we'll take them in’. One instance, in particular,
it’s really been an odyssey over something like three or four months this
summer and the fall was that there was a state institution that was alleged-
ly having issues with drugs being smuggled in in packages. So they cut off
all outside packages and then re-approved vendors and distributors like
‘ourselves on a case by case basis. And we had not yet been re-approved,
so I called the captain and we had a few discussions. And he said, he went
up the chain and got us re-approved after a littl less than a month. And
then when we sent books to the people who had written to us from there,
half of them were rejected, because those inmates, in particular, hadn't
filled out a form and been approved to receive books. So we had to set
up a system where every time we got a request, I called them after that
person was approved to receive books or not, and sent them. Except for
the two packages that we initially got in to people, every time I called the
person was not on the approved list. And I asked whether maybe, since
they heard from us that we have requested them and they want to receive
books, maybe they could get that form to the people that I was calling
about, but they told me that's their initiative and they should know.

So that’s been a pretty frustrating time. I've just had a lot of deten-
tion centers and jails in particular not consider us to be legitimate or not
know what zines are, or give us differing statements about whether we can
get things in or not. As I mentioned, Durham jail hasn't given us issues
about us as a publisher but was just blocking books for several months
because of the amount of, apparently, extra material that was built up and
‘was a fire hazard in the cell, So there’ lot of obstacles to face in bannings
and rejections that can't really be predicted and can apparently only be
solved by weeks of phone calls. I hope this helps. Thank you.





FSR: Do facilities ever have an approved book list that’s the inversion

of the banned list?

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LL: No, I have not seen an approved books list except in the case of one
jail that went back and forth on a policy where I was initially told that they
‘were going to have reading tablets and not allowing any books, any books
besides the Bible or Quran, but then they said that was incorrect. And
they would be allowing in certain books, but only new books, no used.
books, and also have e-readers, The E-Reader thing is a thing that we are
extremely worried about, I say we, in this case, for all Books to Prisons
groups across the country, because that is an approved list of books, that
is what that is functionally because they have a catalog of books that they
said, “No, these are okay for them to read. And they will pay per minute to
use these expensive, breakable e-readers and not have access to any other
literature”. So you can imagine people looking for specific legal help or
niche interests, for example, someone looking for Rastafarianism, there's
probably not going to be a book about that listed inside of this e-tablet that
they also have to pay to use.

So that’s very concerning to us because usually, in the case of pri
ons, digitization and technological advancements, which can look like
progress in the outside world, is not progress inside of the prison. For ex-
ample, changing from having in-person visitation to having a digital vid-
€0 visitation is not an improvement. Changing from having books sent
for free, that you can request on any topic, and having that be disallowed
in favor of e-readers, is not an improvement. Or as we'll talk about in a
second, having your letters be scanned and reprinted is not an improve-
ment of what we're seeing with the letter. So a lot of times people will
think, “Oh, things are going more digital, they're going more virtual and
online, this is advancement, this is progress.” And in the case of prisons, it
isn't.

‘TESR: Yeah, and each of these steps basically shifts the whatever it be: the
medical treatment, or the books, or the mail, or the phone calls, or the
commissary, it shifts them into monopolies by specific corporations,
that are prison industry corporations, that not only are they siphon-
ing money out of the prisoners and of whatever supporters they have
on the outside... In North Carolina, they changed the law about three
years ago where people can only get money added, at least on their
Jpay accounts, for spending inside of prison, they can only have people
ing list. Therefore people who have not, for instance, been
convicted in some cases of felonies in the past. A bunch of limitations.
Anyway, back on topic, as you say, you and I got in touch to talk about
the changes to the North Carolina prison system that we're snuck in a













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couple of months ago, we got a letter from a prisoner in the middle of
the state, just sort of being like “Heads up. I can’t hear your radio but
Thave heard of your project and this change is coming”. Can you talk
alittle bit more about the privatization and digitization of prison mail
in North Carolina and how it'll affect prisoners’ communication with
loved ones on the outside?

LL: Yes. On October 18, North Carolina state prisons switched for all
personal mail - that’s letters, photos, and art and cards - they switched to
having those be sent to the people who intended for incarcerated in state
prisons, to having to send them to Maryland to be scanned by a company
called TextBchind and then have copies reprinted by the prisons and re-
delivered. The announcement of this was subtle, I only found it because
that was on the state prisons homepage looking for something else and
notice the little pop-up that said: “Mail policy changing on October 18”
and I happened to click on it. Otherwise, we would not have known. I
should admit this doesn't affect prison books operations so far. Although
wwe are worried about the possible ban on physical books being sent in.
Now it affects the loved ones of incarcerated people who are trying to
communicate to them.

‘TextBehind is not alone in this. There are a couple of companies
‘who are trying to exploit this very captive market of people who are trying
to sustain relationships across the miles and across the bars and charging,
their money to either get their physical letters back if they send physical
mail hundreds of miles away because otherwise, they'll just be shredded.
So you have to pay to get that back. Or if you want to do it easier, of
course, they have an app. For using their app on TextBehind, letters are
99 cents, you can add photos to 25 cents each, greeting cards are 99 cents,
and Doodle for kids. So you can draw on your computer and send that at
99 cents. And that’s only for partner facilites, it's more expensive ifthe fa-
cility is not partnered with them. And you may not think that sounds like
alot but if you are trying to keep up a relationship with someone or start
a relationship with someone inside, then 99 cents a letter, 99 cents a card,
25 cents for a photo ~ that's very expensive. If you are sending physical
mail, its a flat rate to get it back, I believe at around $3 or higher to get
that sent back to you, So this could add up really quickly, even if you just
sent one letter a week or a couple of letters a month or something like that.
People don't really have a choice in the matter if they want something that
feels personal to be sent behind bars. And we just find this immensely



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worrying and honestly also unjustified. Because there’s really almost no
data provided for why this switch is being made. But we can talk about
that in a second with drug policies.

Asa prison book volunteer, I have received countless letters tell-
ing us how important it is to have a lifeline to the outside where they can
hold on to that letter that someone else wrote and see the signature and
look at this and say it someone out there wrote this for me and intended
it for me, Not to mention if it’s a kid’s drawing or something like that, it’s
{going to mean so much more if you're holding the crayon drawing that,
your son or your daughter, your child drew for you. And it’s one of the
things that sort of keep them sane in there. If correctional facilities, as
they're titled, were truly invested in making people more connected to
humanity, kinder and more willing to invest in society, they would ab-
solutely not be supporting this cut off from the people who are trying to
keep relationships going across the bars, because it’s incredibly dehuman-
izing. Not to mention probably riddled with errors. Wisconsin also just
announced that they are using TextBehind as of December 1. They put in
their announcement that they've experimented a lot with TextBehind and
there have been errors, they admitted cut-off letters where you can't read
the whole thing,

I know from my own experience of keeping records in prison
books, that a lot of things don't scan so great if someone wrote in blue pen,
or on white paper with pencil, it just doesn’t scan correctly. The number
of letters that TextBehind must be handling, I don’t think that it’s going
to be 100% accuracy rate, which looks fine on their numbers, but for the
person who gets a messed up, cut off or barely scanned letter or drawing,
it's going to be devastating because that matters so much. The people who
wait for the mail, there's a huge emotional investment in it. And it’s just
really saddening to think about that being taken away from them. Not sur-
prising, but extremely saddening. And unfortunately, it looks like North
Carolina is going to be continuing that policy for the foreseeable future,
despite so many people protesting it



‘TSR: TextBehind is a new project to me, but for the last few years,
I’ve noticed that Pennsylvania prisons use a company in Florida called
Smart Communications to scan and email their letters to print on-site
at the facility. The Federal Bureau of Prisons, according to an article
recently by Lauren Gill of The Intercept, appears to be moving for-
ward from just scanning mail in-house to having a company called

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Mailed Guard do the same service for them. We've already mentioned
this trend generally in the proliferation of private companies that are
profiting from incarceration. This seems to be a rather frightening and
growing pattern to capture that data and increase the costs.

LL: Smart communications is another one. And I just want to mention
that the Pennsylvania ban initially also banned physical books, but there
‘were enough protests that they changed that. So it’s only mail right now.
And so there was some worry from Books to Prisoners groups that the
ban on mail is going to continue to try to ban books as well.

‘TESR: That's quite frightening. Ihave to admit that I’m not very knowl-
edgeable about drugs in prisons. I've heard that you can get many
things if you have money and resources inside of prisons, especially
depending on what state you're in. But most ellicit items I've heard
about prisoners getting a hold of have come through corrupt guards
and other staff as they shore up their personal accounts because they
don’t get as much scrutiny as generally incoming mail or visitors and
loved ones who are coming in, When PA started using Smart Commu-
nications, it was after mail staff, screws on the inside, basically, were
supposedly dosed by letters containing the drug K2 in the paper. But
then again, this other Intercept article about the privatization of pris-
‘on mail references talking to a director of toxicology at a major med-
;sylvania, And that person saying basically, you
can’t get high off of that, it’s not like Angel Dust where it’s going to just
go into your skin by touching it, you have to increase the temperature,
and you have to inhale smoke, basically, for that K2 to get into your
system, So it seems like an unrealistic expectation that was a major
source of drugs coming in,





LL: Yes. North Carolina, in their announcement about TextBehind in-
cluded a couple of sentences saying “the new mail process will also
prevent drugs from entering the prisons in the form of paper coated in
Fentanyl, K2, Suboxone or other dangerous drugs, these are harmful to
breathe or even touch. This is something you would expect to have a cita-
tion. It doesn’t, The only spot of data that is mentioned in the announce-
ment of this switch to TextBehind is the sentence “In the year following
use of TextBehind in North Carolina's four women’s facilities infractions
for drug use, and possession dropped by 50%, Now, 50% isa pretty round



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and impressive number but there's a lot of missing context here. They
say the number of infractions for drug use and possession dropped. They
don’t mention actual numbers, for example. This was also taking place
during the pandemic for most of that year. Because most of that was 2020,
so the number of people in prisons across North Carolina went down by
allot, you might think that would potentially affect the numbers of infrac-
tions, not to mention the staff being able to investigate that sort of thing.
And they also did not provide any numbers for cases of drugs causing
any hazards to the people inspecting the mail. There was no citation for
that. And as you said, there's been medical pushback from people saying
that K2 and Fentanyl don’t come into the skin. I looked this up a little
before the interview, and the American College of Medical Toxicology
and American Academy of Clinical Toxicology agreed in a 2017 statement
that you can’t inhale and get high from Fentanyl without really high, re-
ally long exposure to it, and that you can’t just absorb it through small
unintentional skin exposure, it would not affect people. So I am almost
impressed by the boldness of NCDPS just stating that flat out as a reason
without citations in the announcement.

We have a Freedom of Information request that is making its way
through the bureaucracy right now in trying to get any information about
the hazards to people in the mail-room and how many drugs have come
in through the mail. But, like you, I am skeptical about that being the way
that most drugs make their way in, Texas saw a ban on mail for the same
reasons, but their drug infractions didn't go down because, as it turned
‘out, they were mostly coming in through guards still. Some people say
there's a connection between that and guards having lower pay and they
can make a lot on the side by carrying in drugs. When I went to a prison.
in person and got the tour when I was in college, I was told by a Captain
that they mostly have to be careful about the guards bringing in contra-
band, that was just stated outright to the group. So this policy seems to
be not only dehumanizing, but also not based on fact, and to make this
huge ofa change, there's a burden of proof that they should make. But this,
wasn't a lav. This was simply a new departmental policy. People started
commenting on our social media posts, when they put this out, like let's
call the lawmakers or something, but this was just something that was
handed down and decided. The fact that privatizing prisons and prison
services is just getting more and more popular, is very concerning to me.
Because they can’t negotiate. And also the poverty of incarcerated people
and their loved ones on the outside is statistically much higher than the

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«general population. So they don't really have alternatives other than to go
to these services.

That's my thoughts on that, but there are plenty of things to read
about, particularly, the drug claims, investigating whether Fentanyl can
actually give you an overdose just from touching it, or where drugs come
through. There are lots you can read online, I suggest at least starting with
the Prison Policy Initiative because they're a good resource to keep track
of the different policies going on around the country and their factual
bases.

‘TFSR: That's super helpful. Thank you. I do have another question
about the implications of the privatization and tracking of mail com-
ing in and out. But you did mention that when people started com-
menting on your social media page saying, “Hey, call politicians chant,
challenge it” the NCDPS is a part of the executive branch. So I guess
you could put pressure on the Governor and Lieutenant Governor, but
how do you suggest that people try to apply pressure, whether they're
in North Carolina or in any of these other states that are being affect-
ed by similar policies and some of the same corporations across the
country?





LL: Well, we haven't had success yet, itis my addendum. But I would find
at least one phone number, one email, and one physical address to call or
to write to to express your opinion, I've usually heard that phone calls are
the best political weapon out of those three. But I know from personal ex-
perience that trying to get through the phone trees and the various exten-
sions you have to press and voicemails you have to leave can be extremely
confusing. So an email or a letter could also work.

Prison Books is not as an organization calling for people to do
this push because we have to keep our services separate from this. How-
ever, I can say as an activist, that I would love it if people started writ-
ing to, for example, the Commissioner of Prisons, Todd Ishee, who is
quoted in a lot of articles about the digitization policy change, to express
your opinion, or writing to the general NCDPS mailbox, the address of
which is at the bottom of every page of the NCDPS website, in Raleigh.
What you basically want to do is make it obvious that it’s a lie to say peo-
ple don’t care about this or that this is fine, this doesn’t affect people.
‘You want to get the voices that are shouting out individually to be able to
unify and be heard together. And we'e still working on that. But anyone

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who wants to be involved in the Free the Mail movement that has started
forming between Wisconsin and North Carolina activists, because we're
both being affected by TextBehind in these most recent months, then they
should, first of all, start looking through the hashtag of #FreeTheMail,
and second of all, potentially email just to get the information where to
g0 prisonbooks@gmail.com. Prison Books is not organizing this, but has
information of people that you can get connected with to try to organize
something against this,

TFSR: I have to say that a hashtag is confusing and also very catchy,
since alot of us use the #FreeThemAl And those two look very similar.

LL: Yeah, I would suggest even for screen readers, you should be capital
ing letters for hashtags because otherwise, it’s gonna be a jumble of letters.
It does look like that, but I looked it up on Twitter to do a litte research
about it, it was used for the Pennsylvania issue as well. There were some
ideas thrown around of “don't jail the mail’, but it’s prisons, not jails, that’s
incorrect. Hashtags are going to leave some meanings out, unfortunately.





TFSR: We've been talking about the limitations that people on the
inside experience with their mail getting scanned and sent to them
and not being able to physically touch a picture that your child or that
your sibling or whatever drew, getting an actual picture, these sorts of
things, very sentimental, very charged with emotional energy and feel-
ing, smelling a piece of paper that someone else has touched... Prisons
are all about cutting people off from the outside and making money off
of them.

The other side of this, as you say, the majority of people that
are inside of prisons, or that are inside of a part of the carceral system,
tend to be poor. And whether that’s because of survival crime, or be-
cause people have less access to lawyers or bail to be able to get them-
selves out, to be able to make a better argument to avoid charges, or
because police tend to hang out in poor people's neighborhoods - all
sorts of reasons. And these industries, like Smart Communications or
‘TextBehind are literally siphoning money out of poor people’s families
when they're trying to keep those connections.

And surveillance inside of prison, the panopticon idea, that’s
pretty common idea, But when you download an app on your phone
that you're paying for, and there's the chance in this Lauren Gill ar-







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ticle on the Federal Bureau of Prisons talking about them switching
over to this privatized scanning and emailing of letters, talks about the
amount of metadata that gets also put into the database of that private
corporations so that they can market more stuff or sell that informa-
tion if they want to to another third party that provides other “services
to prisoners”, or that information is also available to the BOP or to
whatever prison administration there is for tracking and surveilling
the person on the outside that’s keeping track. Suddenly, there’s a per-
manent digital copy of this letter that somebody wrote to someone that
could be used in some case in the future or to build a case or something
like that. Can you talk a bit about the concerns of surveillance when
people aren't even necessarily committing crimes, but just trying to
stay in communication with friends behind bars?



LL: Well, I think the article writers are probably more informed about
that than Iam, but I do know that TextBehind on their Services page does
advertise a variety of their investigative tools and that includes communi-
cations, monitoring and looking for gang connections, and they keep the
records, Not just the pictures, but the scanned text and the addresses and
names of those who sent mail in their system for years, to possibly give
away to other prison systems, the federal system, things like that. Yeah,
they are using the people that they already have under their thumb and
can watch with this panopticon set up to extend surveillance outside and
try to make connections and look for patterns in a way that they probably
think is very efficient, but which is frightening to any of us who are con-
cerned about our right to privacy. But because it’ a human connection to
people who are incarcerated being held hostage, people are going to have
to make the choice about do I want to be able to talk to this person or do
I not want to be put on a list of possible contacts to a third or fourth party
to something that they think exists within the prison system. Having to
choose between those two, that’ our choice that should exist, that should
not be something that writing a letter to someone starts for you. That's
very concerning.

I'm always concerned about the privacy of people incarcerated
as well. But I think a lot of people maybe aren't aware of this extension
of surveillance to those who were just in contact with and care about the
people who are incarcerated. As you mentioned, Jpay’s changes, now you
can’t send money unless you're in the visitation approval. That requires
{getting approved, but also giving them information about you. This data



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harvesting and surveillance is really getting hooked on people on the out-
side as well.

‘TFSR: Well, is there anything that I didn't ask about that you want to
mention, or that you want to broach as a subject, Leigh?

LL: I would like to mention, for people who are looking for what they
can do, that jails are often where a lot of bad policies will be implemented
first because they have far less oversight. They are county institutions, so
they don't even have the state looking out at them. So if you're concerned
about privacy, education, cruel and unusual punishment, pay attention to
a local jal, the sheriff, the warden, their policies, and if they make chang-
¢s like “no one can send books here anymore?’ or a lot of jails in North
Carolina now have to send your letters to Texas to get scanned, call them,
and deluge them because they have even fewer resources to dedicate to
supporting what I suspect to be a lie of the danger that letters and books
pose. In your elections, vote for a sheriff who has concern to incarcerated
people, if that’s possible. And keep an eye on your local jail. And then also
keep an eye on state policies. But if you want to start somewhere local,
that’s where to start.

TESR: And if you're not much of a voter, you can still apply pressure
during the period when there’s more scrutiny on what sheriff is run-
ing for office. Or if they're working with ICE are just a couple of the
potential...





LL: Yeah, that’s a big one. Everyone who's closer is easier to reach. Make
some noise when you can, when these policies get implemented near you.

TFSR: In my understanding, a lot of the Books to Prisoners projects
are pretty independent and they keep in touch with each other and
share news and resources from time to time. The project that you're
involved with covers North Carolina and Alabama, the prison books
here actually, I can't even speak to what APBP covers... But for the
most part, don't cover national stuff. And they pass off things in other
states to people that are closer to them. Tranzmission Prison Project
covers a lot of the US but mostly is in the southeast, as I understand.
How can people find a prison books project where they're at if they
want to start getting involved in this sort of way?

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17 of 18



LL: People can find local Books to Prisoners groups by looking at https:
prisonbookprogram.org/prisonbooknetwork/ and searching for their
state, I there isn't one serving their state, then perhaps they can start their
own. It’s not that difficult, Contacting really any of those listed on the
directory will get you some advice on how to start up. Luckily, books are
something that a lot of people want to donate. It takes not as much effort
as you might think, I would say particularly X Books in Georgia started
up about a year ago and have been doing very well and probably have a
lot of advice for newcomers. For supporting us and particularly for Pris-
‘on Books Collective, I have to say probably what a lot of nonprofits say,
which is that money is our first need. Postage, in particular, is what costs
us money, sending those packages out and every year the rate goes up.
So if you have money to donate, donate it. If you don’t have money, then
give us your time, if you can. We just started accepting volunteers again,
as long as everyone is vaccinated and masked and we are still limiting the
number of people that can come in.

And if you can't do either of those, there's probably online work
that you could do if you got involved, whether it’s social media, applying,
for grants, reaching out to bookstores for partnership, helping with email
There is alot of activism that you can do remotely, that isnt just discourse
‘on Twitter, necessarily, but actively working behind an organization to
help them enhance their capabilities and do reaching out and things like
that for them. Of course, we also take books for Prison Books Collective.
You can email us if you have books to donate, However, I have to say we're
doing pretty well in terms of books right now. And we have most genres
pretty well stocked. But as usual, law and DIY stuff is always in demand.
If you have any books on homesteading, farming, fishing, or trying to
appeal your case in court, then send them our way.

We have a PO Box:

Prison Books
PO Box 625
Carrboro, NC 27510

You're welcome to reach out to us on our Facebook or Instagram or Twit-
ter, or through our email prisonbooks@gmail.com to ask us for more
things you can do. A lot of people have come in with new ideas that have
been very exciting to us. We hope that people can engage remotely or in
person again, because we are an organization that works as a collective

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and we're only as strong as the collective is. So we're excited to have new
people join us. And of course, I personally would advocate for everyone
to just keep their ears and eyes to the news and look for a variety of news
sources, not just the mainstream news sources about what's going on,
and to advocate for the destruction of the prison industrial complex as we
thank you.



know it.

The Final Straw Radio / Prison Mail Digitization
THE

A WEEKLY ANARCHIST SHOW

The Final Straw is a weekly anarchist and anti-authoritari-
an radio show bringing you voices and ideas from struggle
around the world. Since 2010, we've been broadcasting from
occupied Tsalagi land in Southern Appalachia (Asheville, NC).

We also frequently feature commentary (serious and humor-
ous) by anarchist prisoner, Sean Swain.

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PO Box 6004

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USA

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