Facing pressure from Republican legislators, the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) is considering draconian new restrictions on incoming mail and books, including banning all mail pending a transition to controversial privatized mail digitization services. We are organizing to stop this egregious censorship attempt that undermines education, rehabilitation and community connection. To the IDOC and the IL general assembly: do not ban people from accessing physical letters and books through the mail, do not concede to easily disproved right-wing drug war copaganda—invest in resources, not restrictions!
Several Republican state representatives published a letter to IDOC acting director Latoya Hughes hyping up an imagined epidemic of guards overdosing in prison mail rooms, urging that they “temporarily suspend the processing of all non-legal mail.” This is an egregious, blunt ban on all incoming communications. The letter cites several incidents where prison staff sought medical attention due to alleged “drug exposures.” WSILTV reported that six staff members at Shawnee Correctional Center “experienced medical symptoms while sorting mail.” However, the Marion Fire Rescue Hazardous Material Team found negative test results on any supposed contraband or the officer’s clothes. So far, no evidence has been produced that connects any incoming mail to any actual harm to these officers. Editor’s note: IDOC’s press office did not respond to a request for comment.
Toxicologists have repeatedly concluded that it is literally impossible for an accidental exposure to drugs like fentanyl through simple handling of the drug in one report after another after another after another. This phenomenon of police overdosing in the field has been debunked thoroughly and frequently, yet prison staff continue to trot out this same narrative again and again, and media and legislators continue to parrot inaccurate police talking points without any verification. This familiar script composes the core of the prison censorship regime’s playbook, now infecting the majority of state prison systems and county jails: police and politicians spread panic about drug overdoses through the mail, then their friends in private prison tech giants like Smart Communications and, and Securus swoop in to sell expensive dystopian “solutions.” They repeat this bit in every city and town, including nearby federal prison USP Thomson and Cook County Jail. Scanning services are widely used in state prison systems, despite studies showing such security services have not slowed the availability of drugs in places that have been scanning for years like Pennsylvania DOC.
Illinois already contracts with Global Tel-Link to provide tablets for ebooks, texting and video visits, which are used not as a means to provide the unlimited wealth of knowledge available to everyone else in the world, but are instead heavily restricted corporate sandboxes with no internet access. Prisoners are robbed of the constitutional right to receive physical books and mail and are instead nickel-and-dimed on unaffordable tablets with extremely limited selections (for example, Illinois only has copyright-free texts for titles more than eighty years old).
The tablet’s “texting” features have no formatting options or pictures, and they are often unavailable because of lockdowns, equipment failures, or for group punishment. If someone transfers to another prison or county jail, all their previous communications are lost forever. This tech is marketed to prison administrators as progressive technology-forward secure alternatives so that they can then eliminate physical visits, physical mail, and physical libraries, against prisoners’ constitutional rights, against American Library Association standards, against the UN Mandela Rules standard minimum conditions of confinement, and against general rehabilitative goals and common human decency.
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Op-Ed: Paper Ban at Cook County Jail Restricts Access to Letters, Books and Learning Material
This new push by Republican legislators comes after IDOC has already been quietly imposing new restrictions on incoming books and mail. Last year, an unpublished IDOC Administrative Directive added a requirement that all books must come from the “Publisher”, preventing friends and family from sharing reading materials (although there are exceptions for “approved visitors”). The IDOC policy 05.02.151 Mail Procedures for Individuals in Custody was not passed with any public comment period, and it is still not even public on their website (we had to FOIA for it).
For a while, several IDOC prisons including Menard began rejecting dozens of our packages, wasting hundreds of dollars in postage, until we demonstrated our legitimacy as a Publisher/Distributor. Then last year, IDOC quietly added the words “no hardback books” to their website—another major policy change also without any public comment or published Administrative Directive. Illinois was one of the few states remaining that we were even able to send hardcover books to, until now: already several dozen packages of books are being turned back from institutions such as Menard (even packages with a mix of hardcover and softcover). Menard, like so many other prisons, had already been increasingly rejecting hundreds of books for any perceived “stain,” “odor,” “page crinkle,” “yellowed pages,” and a dozen other frivolous “content-neutral” reasons, without any actual drug test confirmations.
Despite priding itself on the “first state to ban book bans,” Illinois seems to be following the shameful nationwide prison censorship trend making up the nation’s biggest ban on books characterized by mail scanning services, monopolistic authorized-only book vendors, and “content-neutral” restrictions often used as cover for political censorship. Prisons in neighboring Wisconsin and Missouri both now use mail scanning services, and have pushed out groups such as ours and Wisconsin Books to Prisoners. Last year the Illinois legislature passed HB2789, which denies funding to libraries if they do not follow the American Library’s Association’s “Library Bill of Rights.” But there’s no justice unless everyone’s included: it would be refreshing to see that same logic and compassion applied to incarcerated people at prisons that routinely ban books and aren’t in compliance with the ALA’s 2024 Standards for Incarcerated and Detained Individuals.
It is disturbing that we are often contacted by staff members at various prisons and jails asking us to donate books while others in their same administration are actively making it more difficult for people inside to access literature. Consider Cook County Jail, which does not have a library, heavily restricts incoming books and mail, and last year imposed a paper ban. For all the TV news segments that Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart has appeared on to blame books and the mail, so many of their own staff and contractors end up being caught for smuggling drugs. We were contacted by CCDOC’s Education Department asking us to provide donated books because they are “looking to create a book cart,” while at the same time their mail room is rejecting several hundred packages of books for the pettiest fictitious reasons, and throwing our appeals in the garbage.
Editor’s note: A spokesperson for the Cook County Sheriff’s Office provided the following statement: “There has never been a ban on paper, mail, and books at the Jail, nor have individuals ever been denied access to their legal documents. Books are allowed, but in order to conduct thorough searches for drug soaked paper there is and always has been a limit on the total number of books allowed. We continually search and find pages of books containing suspicious substances, and in rare occasions, content within the books that depict anything that poses a threat to the safety and security of the Jail. These measures are critical in preventing the spread of dangerous substances, safeguarding lives, and maintaining a secure environment for everyone at the Jail. Last year, seven individuals in custody tragically lost their lives from a fatal overdose, four of which were related to drug-soaked paper. The Sheriff’s Office implemented necessary protocols to deter the smuggling of drug-soaked paper, which poses a deadly risk to individuals in custody at the Jail.”
For over twenty years, we have been sharing reading materials with our community behind bars. We know how life-changing books and mail are to people behind bars, and how destructive book bans are to our civil rights and collective humanity. We’re not going for it. Let’s make Illinois the state where prison book bans go to die! We are calling on Governor Pritzker, IDOC Director Latoya Hughes, and the Illinois General Assembly: leave the mail and books alone!
Since 2004, Midwest Books to Prisoners has been engaged in direct support of incarcerated people and their educational goals by mailing them books, magazines, and other printed material free of charge.
