LITTLE ROCK (KATV) — The Arkansas Department of Corrections is considering the adoption of a new policy for how books can be mailed to prisoners, after abandoning an earlier plan to flat-out ban sending inmates physical reading materials because of the prevalence of books laced with drugs.
The new policy the Board of Corrections is looking at is the establishment of a central processing facility where reading material mailed to prisoners will be checked for contraband, especially drugs.
In February, a proposed Division of Corrections policy that would have prohibited mailing books to state inmates did not go into effect because it lacked legislative approval and faced backlash from inmate advocacy and prison reform groups.
“It would have been the most strict policy in the United States,” DecARcerate Co-Director Kaleem Nazeem said.
Nazeem himself spent nearly 30 years in an Arkansas prison and says unit libraries are insufficient and outdated. He says books and especially college course materials inmates receive in the mail are important to their rehabilitation and offer the only freedom within prison walls.
“We don’t want people in our prison systems become worse. We want them to come, come better and through education. Uh, it has been proven, you know, like, especially when we talk about, uh, college courses through secondary education…it reduces recidivism,” Nazeem said.
The less restrictive solution the Board of Corrections is considering now is a dedicated repository where books can be examined for contraband — a solution that may not require legislative approval.
But the Division of Corrections still has a problem — it says it’s seeing more and more books laced with drugs being mailed to inmates, leading to more overdose cases. Last year there were 30 overdose deaths.
“And this year we’ve had we’re on track to have a similar number…before that, it was only about 16. And the year before that, about six. So we’re seeing an increase,” Board of Corrections member Lee Watson said.
Still, Nazeem is worried that under the new proposed policy, inmates’ families may incur additional costs associated with the added security measure. He is also concerned that if reading materials sent to inmates must go through a single facility, it will cause significant delays.
Watson says it is unlikely inmates or families would incur any extra costs related to the security measure. He acknowledges that inmates may have longer wait times to receive mailed books, but it is a necessary safety measure and will not impact letters, which are processed separately.
“I don’t foresee additional costs being passed on to the inmates. And I think the only delay is going to come if the what is being sent in tests positive. You know, I’m sure there’ll be a modest amount of delay, but I don’t expect anything significant. And that was the idea, I think, of having a central place so that it could be more efficient in in going through the books and testing them,” Watson said.
“I was glad to see that they are kind of reversing a course on the direction that they were previously trying to go. And I just will hope that they keep down that that path of really looking for more healthier options,” Nazeem said.
Current Arkansas corrections policy allows state inmates to receive physical books and other print media in the mail, as long as they are shipped straight from publishers or approved commercial vendors and pass each unit’s security screening.
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