As I looked through Target’s greeting card section to send something for Christmas I had to remember that the card I chose could be no larger than 6” x 8” with no more than a single fold, commercially produced and made of standard cardstock. According to the Michigan Department of Correction’s mail policy I had to pick a card that also had no embellishments, cutouts, jewels or raised areas. With the holidays right around the corner, choices in cards were slim and almost every card I saw had at least one of the MDOC’s restricted elements. Many cards do what they can to stand out with no consideration for the incarcerated folks who may have only that small piece of weighted paper to light up their holiday while separated from everyone they love. As I look at the glitter and pop-outs on different cards, I can’t help but wonder if mail restrictions actually make prisons safer. As I read through the long list of what people aren’t allowed to send to incarcerated people I never heard of a case where anything dangerous was smuggled into a prison through grains of glitter or an extra fold in a greeting card. With all the contraband items that come in through Corrections Officers themselves, family members and friends are the least incentivized to risk their privilege to connect with the ones they love. As I settled for a card that I hoped wouldn’t get rejected like the birthday card I’d sent earlier in the year my heart burned with stress and anxiety. Its an anxiety that many snail mailers feel, knowing that their mail can be held, censored or rejected for reasons ranging from the ‘wrong’ color of the pen or paper to being arbitrarily labeled as ‘gang’ related. Even as I write this piece there are several items I’ve mailed into MDOC’s Alger Correctional Facility that have yet to be delivered to the inmate it was addressed to. Weeks would pass before mail was transferred from the mailroom to the prisoner even if it had not been rejected. Snails may even be too fast to accurately describe mailing someone who is incarcerated.
Mailrooms Aren’t the Only Source of Confined Communication
GTL PTSD is a condition I suffer from now. GTL, Global Tel Link, is the privately owned telecommunications company responsible for administrating calls for hundreds of thousands of incarcerated people across the country. It’s a surprise that with the thousands of one star reviews on multiple sites that this company stays in business. Their survival is entirely dependent on the monopolization of the prisoner telecommunications market. Family and friends have no other choice but to pay this provider a deposit fee along with an inflated per minute charge if they want to be able to receive a call from someone on the inside. According to Prison Phone Justice, a 15min call ranges from $2.50 – $17 dependent on the state in which someone is incarcerated and with the vast majority of prisoners being unemployed with no source of steady income, families usually foot this bill.
With the vast majority of those incarcerated in the United States being from impoverished communities many cannot afford this additional phone bill from GTL and find themselves even more separated from the ones they love inside. On the low end of the spectrum, daily fifteen minute call to one’s spouse for someone incarcerated the state of Arkansas can expect a bill of an $135 every month if their conversations never extend beyond fifteen minuets. This bill would be in addition to the deposit fee, which ranges from $3-$5 on top of whatever the cost of the carrier’s phone bill would be. Knowing the high cost of connecting and with all of the effort that goes into setting up a phone account with GTL, missing a call can be extremely upsetting.
Mariame Kaba Every time that I think about missing his call my heart drops. In the back of my head I know how much of a hassle it is for him to get to one of the only five phones in his unit where hundreds of other men also compete to connect with the world outside of prison walls. The holiday season only intensifies this feeling. My heart aches wondering when he’ll be able to call again, knowing that allowing myself to think about it too much may bring me to tears. Like many incarcerated many hours away from their families, the opportunity to visit is restricted by a 12 hour drive so the phone lines are the only method of direct communication. Millions of people share this form of traumatic stress. The trauma is rooted in years of separation. For every single one of the 2.3 million people incarcerated in the United states there are hundreds of millions of people who serve time with them: mothers, fathers, children, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins and all of them are also deeply tangled within the web of policies and regulations as they await their day of freedom from the DOC. Author Mariame Kaba and Illustrator Bria Royal have recently published a children’s book that addresses this, Missing Daddy, “Missing Daddy is a crucial book for our times. Using storytelling and gorgeous artwork, this book brings heart, soul, and deep compassion to the challenges facing kids with incarcerated parents. A much needed piece of children’s literature.”
Too Busy with Family to Make Time for Family
During the holidays we all find ourselves ‘busier’ than usual. With children to shop for, people to visit and deadlines to meet before the big dates juggling with DOC makes connecting with family nearly impossible. The prison where he’s located across the water, over a bridge and more than a six hour drive one way requires a the sacrifice of an entire day in order for us to spend time together face to face. This setup is intentional, isolation is rooted in the construction of every prison built in Michigan’s upper peninsula where the majority of its inmates are from the south in the lower peninsula.
Knowing that people who are incarcerated hear so many No’s from their lawyers, judges, officers, prison staff and other inmates; disappointment is the last thing that family members want to bring into their caged loved ones lives, but for them the holidays are always covered in a cloud of disappointment. There are never enough visits, phone calls, snail mail or messages that can fill the deep void of separation that corrections creates between inmates and their families. You would think that Corrections Departments that are committed to the successful rehabilitation of their inmates would never send an individual more than a couple of hours away from their families residence. There’s no way that someone can develop healthy behaviors while being isolated in a violent, oppressive environment for decades. Prisons that are committed to the well being of their inmates should not only house them close to home but should also extend visitation hours during the holiday season. Both of these changes would better accommodate people visiting caged community members.
Corrections Quicksand
With all of the increased exposure shining a light on the modern slavery that exists in the United States its becoming more and more obvious that the Corrections Department is sinking within itself. Like anything locked within the grip of quicksand, I can’t even separate the prisons from the dangerous effects that it has on inmates, officers and the staff within them. The Corrections Department leaves all those who pass through it damaged and suffering from some form of violence and abuse. Speaking from experience, this applies to visitors and volunteers as well. A violent and oppressive environment produces those traits that bleed on everyone, not just the inmates, but the longer that one is locked in its grips, the less likely that they would ever be free. This is the way that the system is designed. From the prisoner who finds themselves trapped within the revolving door of parole violations to the corrections officer chasing after the next form of job security associated with each employment milestone. Realizing that living in the prison world makes it nearly impossible to adjust to any other environment, the civilian world feels so far away.
With every measure used to make prisons ‘safer’, each action actually work to more effectively separate prisoners from their families, especially as it relates to mailing and telecommunications. The unhealthy barriers between inmates and the outside relationships that they are dependent on for a successful release created by the DOC works to expose its as a violent environment resistant to well-being of its inmate population. During the holidays prisons dangerously drift farther away from societal consciousness as people on the outside become more distracted by holiday festivities. We must be intentional about continuing to reach out to those barred from easily connecting with us if we want to maintain those connections that will keep them safe, sane and feeling loved during what is supposed to be the “most wonderful time of the year”.
