Why should jail ban handwritten letters from loved ones?

Is it an excessive amount of to ask to have the ability to ship a letter to my son in jail and know he’ll maintain it in his fingers? To know he can learn it in his cell after which unfold and browse it many times each time? To know he can maintain it the way in which I maintain his letters to me?

For the primary three years that my son Kevin was incarcerated in San Mateo County, this was not an excessive amount of to ask. The jail employees used to open my letters, verify them for illicit messages and contraband after which ship them to my son. I wrote my letters realizing they’d be inspected but additionally realizing that they’d be delivered. In his fingers, my letters went again to being one thing between us, one thing of me that he may have and will maintain.

I shared private and household information, and I talked about the way it felt to reside this stuff with out him as an alternative of experiencing them collectively. I despatched letters sharing and supporting our Hindu religion, copying out prayers and chants in Fiji Hindi. I despatched different letters particularly to assist him study our lovely ancestral language, writing as soon as in Fiji Hindi and once more in my English translation. These letters stored Kevin linked to me and to our household, the identical manner his letters encouraging me to remain constructive and to maintain up my common routine stored all of us linked to him.

That ritual was interrupted in 2021 when the San Mateo County Sheriff’s Workplace employed Sensible Communications, a for-profit firm in Florida. From then on, I used to be to ship my letters to Sensible Communications, which might scan after which destroy the originals. The corporate would then share an image of the letter with the jail, the place Kevin may learn it solely in a public house on a pill throughout restricted leisure time. Regulation enforcement may learn scans of my letters at any time, months and even years after I despatched them, with none suspicion that Kevin was doing something fallacious and with out telling both of us.

Kevin and I quickly determined I might now not write him letters. It bothered me that my letters needed to be accessible for therefore many to learn, and that the originals — the work of my coronary heart and of my fingers — needed to be destroyed. It bothered each of us that the jail and a personal firm had been gaining a lot details about incarcerated individuals’s households and a lot management over their communications with family members.

I comforted myself by specializing in the truth that Kevin may nonetheless draw on letters I had despatched earlier. However when he returned to his cell after being hospitalized in November, all his belongings had been gone, together with all my letters and the copy of the Bhagavad Gita that my daughter despatched. Now he has nothing.

The sheriff’s press launch simply stated the change was for “security and safety” causes; later, the county blamed considerations over fentanyl publicity. However earlier than the ban, San Mateo County routinely screened jail mail and by no means stated fentanyl publicity was a major problem. Different jails and prisons throughout the nation that employed Sensible Communications additionally blamed fentanyl regardless of proof displaying that when medication are trafficked into jails and prisons, it’s primarily by way of jail personnel.

Kevin and I made a decision to hitch with different incarcerated individuals, relations and a gaggle of artists in San Francisco to sue San Mateo County and its sheriff’s workplace. This coverage violates our First and Fourth Modification rights and our rights beneath the California Structure. We all know it’s not an excessive amount of to ask that we are able to ship our family members bodily letters, and that we are able to achieve this with out sacrificing a lot of our privateness.

Malti Prasad lives in Sacramento. Her son, Kevin, is incarcerated within the San Mateo County Jail.