Des Moines, Iowa — Advocates for prisoners says Iowa’s new system of screening mail that’s sent to inmates is confusing and hard to navigate.
All non-legal mail is sent to a third-party company to be opened, screened and scanned, then a color copy is sent to the inmate. Professor Alison Guernsey, in the University of Iowa College of Law, says communication between inmates and people on the outside is valuable in maintaining strong connections.
The new policy was instituted after it was found people were soaking letters in drugs and sending them to inmates who could chew the paper to ingest the drugs. Guernsey, who’s director of the University of Iowa’s Federal Criminal Defense Clinic, worries about whether the policy could have negative effects for inmates.
Guernsey says communication between inmates and people on the outside is valuable in maintaining good relationships and she says this new policy chips away at that.
Nancy O’Geary Smith has a son in an Iowa prison and used to send him mail frequently, but she says the new system is confusing and made it difficult to communicate in a system that already has a lot of rules and policies.
The policy was instituted in July over concern about drugs, particularly a synthetic drug known as K-2, getting into prisons through the mail. The Iowa Department of Corrections says people can continue to send mail to inmates through the postal service, as long as the senders are properly addressing the envelopes with the right information and the mail meets guidelines.
