Under Lock & Key

Prisoner(s) housed at FSP (Florida State Prison) on C.M.-I & II (Close Management) status are being used by FDOC/FSP and JPay as means of robbing our family(s) and friend(s), thus inflicting punishment beyond court ordered separation from society as sole and significant punishment for crime.

In 2021, the Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) installed new private contracted prison mail system services mandating that all routine mail to prisoner(s) be addressed to Tampa, Florida office to be processed, i.e., scanned for verbal contraband and forwarded via JPay email system service to mail room of intended institution, to then be printed out and delivered to intended prisoner(s). However, such service is not being consistently and timely provided, except only when and where convenient to and for FSP administration, STG (Security Threat Group) personnel and mail room, all in punishment for prisoner(s) being on C.M. status.

1. Inconsistency and untimeliness in mail delivery to prisoner(s)

1. Prisoner(s) are not receiving all incoming routing mail and email in timely and consistent manner. Mail is being intentionally delayed, withheld for weeks, in some cases, months after the post mark, constituting violation of mail rule. CH. 33-210.101(6) F.A.C, which clearly states, “Incoming and outgoing routine mail shall be processed within 72 hours, except for inmates in certain housing assignments identified in paragraph (7) below, which pertinently states:”(7) inmates, that as of a result of housing designation or status are not permitted to access kiosk, kiosk services, or tablet services as provided for in Rule. 33-601.900 F.A.C, will have their scanned mail printed and delivered at no cost to the inmate.”

2. Lack of notification

1. Prisoner(s) incoming routine mail is being sent back, withheld or thrown away by Tampa private mail contractor office, without issuing notice of any kind to prisoner(s) or sender(s).

3. Effect on prisoner(s)/loved-one(s) relationship structure and rehabilitation process

1. Incoming mail being received by FSP mail room via JPay mail system service is not being consistently and/or timely printed out and delivered to intended prisoner(s).
2. Prisoner(s) have no way of knowing that mail had been sent to them until informed by sender(s), either through argument or worrisome inquiry as to why prisoner(s) are not responding to mail, causing sender(s) to feel ignored.
3. Prisoner(s) are kept unaware of undelivered, deprived mail, while sender(s) are unaware of fact that prisoner(s) are not responding, not because they don’t want to, but because prisoner(s) are not receiving all mail being sent to them, because;
4. FSP mail room, and administration are literally and intentionally playing games (not printing and delivering all prisoner(s) incoming mail) resulting in relationship structure conflicts, leading to prisoner(s)/loved-one(s) alienation and isolation.

4. Objective investigation, review of kiosk of kiosk inbox

1. Objective review of each FSP, C.M.-I & II status prisoners’ Jpay kiosk account inbox will clearly confirm the truth in this matter, by revealing the scores of undelivered emails and photos, sent to prisoner(s), but never printed out and delivered, as is prescribed by Rule. 33-210.101 (7) F.A.C
2. Prisoner(s) or their family(s) and friend(s), due to being ignorant of this denied service (robbery) are not realizing that prisoner(s) are being held semi-incommunicado, as punishment for being on administrative segregation (C.M.) status, which is not D.C. (Disciplinary Confinement) status, in fact prisoner(s) on D.C. status, are allowed more privileges than C.M., i.e., non-D.C. status prisoner(s), and this is all intentional.

5. Conflict in FDOC/FSP Jpay Kios/Tablet Policy

1. Rule. CH. 33-602.900 (4)(C)3 F.A.C and CH.33-602.900(5)(d)3 F.A.C, which governs Jpay kiosk and tablet clearly states that: “Prisoners on C.M. status are allowed access to JPay kiosk, kiosk services, tablet and tablet services,” stands in polar contrast with CH.33-601.800(11)(b)7 F.A.C and CH.33-601.800(11)8.(c)5. F.A.C, which governs C.M., clearly states the opposite, that “C.M.-I & II status” prisoners (respectively) are not allowed access to kiosk, kiosk services, tablet and/or tablet services.” (to keep prisoners from becoming aware of the scores of emails, letters, and photos listed in their (prisoner(s) inbox, but are not being printed out and delivered to them) while;
2. C.M.-III status prisoners are allowed access to JPay kiosk, kiosk services, tablets and tablet services, constituting not only administrative disparity in treatment and discrimination against C.M.-I & II status prisoners, but FSP administrative use of JPay email system services as a means of or device of authoritarian intimidation, punishment and control.

6. Robbery: Family(s)/Friend(s) of Prisoner(s) not receiving JPay services they are paying for.

1. Family(s)/friend(s) of prisoner(s) purchase digital postage stamps for a promise that their emails to loved-ones in prison will be delivered without hindrance, a service paid for, which is not being delivered/received, due to their sent emails not being printed out and delivered consistently to their prisoner-loved-ones, being punished solely for being on C.M. status.
2. Hundreds of FSP (all C.M.-I & II status) prisoners are not receiving letters and/or photos sent to them via JPay email system service. Thus, family(s)/friend(s) of prisoner(s) are being bilked, literally robbed for their hard earned money by JPay and FDOC via FSP mail room, STG and administration, constituting the bilking of unknown amounts of money once all prisoners and undelivered emails are tallied up and combined. The results is robbery and false advertising.

7. Nonexistent FDOC/FSP Grievance Process

1. Many grievances regarding all issues mentioned above have been repeatedly submitted at every level in the grievance process and are being biasedly rubber stamped “DENIED” or not returning or responded to, or plain and simple being thrown in the trash. FDOC secretary office is very well aware of this fact, but is refusing to intervene or rectify the situation trashing of prisoner(s) grievances. See formal grievance, log #22-6-27139.

8. Remedy

1. That FDOC Tampa private contracted mail service provide written notice for impounded or withheld incoming routine mail being withheld for STG surveillance or being returned to sender(s).
2. That FDOC/FSP kiosk and tablet policy be rectified to uniformity.
3. That FSP mail room print out and deliver all digital mail, letters/photos entering its system, to intended prisoner(s) in timely and consistent manner, thereby ensuring;
4. That all Jpay email service and routine mail service paid for by family(s) and friend(s) of prisoner(s) be received without hindrance, i.e., end the bilking/robbery of prisoner(s) family(s) and friend(s) via use of prisoner(s), resulting in incalculable amounts of money being stolen.
5. That all money for all undelivered emails, letters and/or photos be reimbursed, given back to family(s) and friend(s) if prisoner(s).

Respectfully submitted

P.S. Concerns regarding this issue can be addressed to the:
Better Business Bureau,
JPay Company headquarters,
FDOC, Lauren.Sanchez@fdc.myflorida.com
(830)717-3605

Stop The JPay Bilking

UPDATE:

A few weeks after MIM(Prisons) received a copy of the above complaint we received an update:

“Florida Department of Cruelty has finally rectified ch.33-601.800 (dealing with JPay kiosk and tablets on C.M.: Close Management) to be in uniformity with ch.33-602.900 (which deals with Jpay kiosk and tablet). As of 6 October 2022, every prisoner is allowed access to kiosk and tablets. This was not done out of altruism. However, I believe JPay threw a rod regarding the amount of money their being denied via the thousands of prisoners being denied their service or should I say bilking. I won’t even front with a tablet, I won’t need anyone to transcribe my thoughts and I can get my thoughts out to be published allowing me to raise funds for appealing my criminal case while enlightening others in the bigger cage.”

It remains to be seen how the resolution of this conflict will affect all of the complaint outlined above. But we can say that Under Lock & Key continues to be denied to the majority of prisoners in the Florida DOC, as do publications like our Revolutionary 12 Step Program, which are tools intended to help people rehabilitate and reintegrate into society and to serve their community upon doing so. As the comrade above notes, there is clear bias, both politically and nationally, as far as what communications are allowed in Florida and in most of the prisons across this country.

Today at Polk Correction Institution the prep-team beat a young man in full restraints named Mr. Fox as he screamed for help during a shake-down: video surveillance was not provided.

15 March 2021, a few weeks before the killing of Andrew Brown by Pasquotank Sheriff’s Department, I was maced, tased, beat, and nearly killed by almost 20 Pasquotank C.O.s. The beating occurred in 6 different locations in the building including 3 elevators. I received several life lasting injuries to the head, face, and mouth from being punched and kicked over a hundred times while laying flat on the ground on my stomach and/or side. A chunk of meat was ripped out of my shoulder from being dragged over 50 ft. I was choked while beaten til they thought and asked one another if I was dead.

Another official cut my thumb with a switch blade and I received several other injuries that medical refused to treat or document. The officers said, “they’ll be back to beat me every chance they get and that I better not eat.”

I was emergency shipped, and 3 hours later pictures were taken of my injuries when I arrived at Polk Correctional Institution (High-Risk-Security).

Pasquotank Prison Officials deny to have ever touched me and claim their innocence while not even bothering to explain how my injuries were sustained. The disciplinary officer found that the video footage of the incident had been tampered with and cut-short.

18 October 2021, all mail for North Carolina prisoners will be received at TextBehind in Phoenix, MD with long time promises of iPads in the future. Should department of public safety provide proper video surveillance for safety before iPads for profit and entertainment? Surveillance is critical to maintain and monitor unwanted violence.

Relief in the claim I’ve filed against Pasquotank Correctional Institution include that the courts enforce a policy with an injunction ordering hand-held cameras be used when escorting offenders or using force in blind spots.

Unfortunately, body-cams in prison make it harder for guards to smuggle contraband or have relations which would decrease the rate of violence from drug related issues allowing more prisoners to focus on rehabilitation and money management.

With this we would ask for higher pay rates to support our families and conjugal visits for married couples.

Prayers out for the family of Andrew Brown and the victims of police brutality.

For a full report of Pasquotank Prison Incident, see: “Two Letters From North Carolina Prisons Make the Same Demands 45 Years Apart.”

MIM(Prisons) adds: In the last issue of Under Lock & Key one of our comrades addressed the use of tablets to pacify and surveil the oppressed in A Strategic Objective to Disrupt and Surveil the Communication Between Prisoners and Our Loved Ones. The article above connects this to the many campaigns prisoners have waged to get cameras in prisons so that there is documentation of the regular abuse and illegal happenings that go on inside.

In 2014, comrades in North Carolina won a lawsuit to [require staff of NCPDS to record with video cameras any use of force incidents]((https://www.prisoncensorship.info/article/north-carolina-prisoners-preliminary-victory-on-use-of-force-lawsuit/). This suit however, left it up to the pigs to determine when cameras need to be used. As AK47 asks, if the state is to invest more money in technology, shouldn’t it be on this important task of preventing physical abuse and drug trafficking, both of which leads to the loss of humyn lives?

We can also take lessons from the implementation of universal cameras, including audio recording, in California which brought up concerns of excessive monitoring of prisoners, including in counseling and rehabilitation programs. Just last year, another lawsuit in California brought a federal court order requiring body cameras in Richard J. Donovan Correctional Facility in California, resulting in passive protests from staff in the form of not running programs for prisoners.

Modern surveillance and communication technology can be used for good and for bad, for the interests of the oppressed or the interests of the oppressor. The interests of the oppressed lie in holding the state accountable for the rampant abuse and drug dealing its employees commit every day, while being able to maintain connections to society, engaging in rehabilitation programs where they can speak freely and openly. The interests of the state lie in pacifying the population with pop culture media and surveilling the communication of those who cannot be pacified.

When I first came to prison in 1995, there were hardly any for-profit corporations doing business inside Virginia prisons. Almost all services including medical care, dental care and the commissary were provided by the state. This began to change in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with the introduction of corporations like Prison Health Services to provide substandard prison health care and keep the commissary filled with high priced commissary items. Prisoners’ communication would also be outsourced to JPay, another for-profit company.

The Virginia Department of Corrections administration implemented a series of policies to manipulate us and our loved ones into accepting JPay as our only method of communication. On 6 August 2013, A. David Robertson, the Chief of Corrections and Operations, issued memorandum #073-2013, advising the prisoner class that effective 1 October 2013, our loved ones can no longer send us money orders through the postal mail and that they can only send us money through JPay, which requires our family to pay exorbitant transaction fees. If money orders were received in the mail after that day they were returned to sender.

On 7 May 2014, Robertson issued another memorandum, #033-214, advising the prisoner class that effective 1 July 2014, we can no longer receive more than 5 photographs through the mail. If a letter arrived at the prison containing more than 5 photographs, the entire letter including the 5 photos were returned to sender. This may seem small, but again this was subtle manipulation for acceptance of what was to come.

Perhaps the Virginia Department of Corrections most draconian policy implementation was detailed in a 13 March 2017 memorandum issued by the then warden of Sussex State Prison. In this memo we were advised that effective 17 April 2017,

“all incoming general correspondence, that is U.S. postal mail, will be photocopied at a maximum of three black and white photocopied pages front and back will be provided to the offender. The original envelope, letter and all enclosed documents will be shredded in the institutional mailroom. The entire correspondence and all enclosed items, including photographs, greeting cards, newspaper articles, etc. that exceed the established photocopy or size limit will be returned to sender.”

What this memo did not mention is that during the process of copying and scanning incoming postal letters from our loved ones, a digital copy of the letter along with the name and address of the person who sent it is uploaded and cataloged in a massive database. This policy was implemented under the guise of preventing the flow of drugs into these prisons, however the real motivation for this policy is reflected in the following one-sentence reminder listed in this memo:

“Individuals will still be permitted to send an offender secure messages, photographs and other attachments through the JPay system as it is currently authorized.”

Many prisoners and our loved ones view the amenity of exchanging emails with our loved ones as incredibly convenient. As a conscious prisoner I recognize that it also makes it easier for prison officials to censor and disrupt our communications and conduct surveillance and intelligence gathering on prisoners and those we communicate with. According to the Virginia Department of Corrections operating procedures 803.1, which governs offender correspondence and JPay emails inside all Virginia prisons, our incoming and outgoing correspondence is not supposed to be withheld for longer than 48 hours. However, our incoming and outgoing JPay emails are routinely withheld for several days or weeks at a time. Sometimes they are held for months at a time.

Operating procedure 803.1 prohibits prison officials from opening and reading our outgoing correspondence absent an approved mail cover from the warden, and reasonable suspicion that the correspondence violates state or federal law, or threatens the safety of the facility. However all incoming and outgoing JPay emails pass through a screening mechanism, whereby the prison’s mailroom staff and intelligence officers sit behind a computer monitor and read the personal and intimate words of prisoners and our loved ones, which, like our photocopied letters, are then cataloged and stored in a massive database.

Operating procedure 803.1 also prohibits the censorship of offender correspondence unless the censorship is based on legitimate facility interests of safety and security. However, JPay makes it easier for mailroom staff and intelligence officers to sit behind a computer monitor and with the click of a mouse block or censor the outgoing emails of prisoners complaining of prison conditions as well as incoming emails of loved ones containing information about the Black Panther Party and other progressive and revolutionary movements from the 1960s and 1970s.

The U.S. Supreme Court in Procunier v. Martinez (1974) ruled that:

“Communications by letter is not accomplished by the act of writing words on paper. Rather it is effected only when the letter is read by the addressee. Both parties to the correspondence have an interest in securing that result. As such, censorship of the communication between them necessarily impinges on the interests of each.”

This U.S. Supreme Court ruling and prison policies of surveillance and censorship listed above reveals that the fascist and repressive nature of prisons extend beyond these prison walls and adversely impacts those of you in the community. This should give human and civil rights activists, including our loved ones, additional motivation to work in solidarity with incarcerated freedom fighters to challenge these Constitutional violations via civil litigation.

Ultimately, what we need to do is develop a collective inside/outside analysis and strategy to dismantle the U.S. imperialist prison system.

All Power to the People!

The state is tightening its control on free communication and association in prisons across the country by imposing digital monitoring systems, and in some cases banning hard copies of mail.

The North Carolina Department of Public Safety has begun using a company called TextBehind to handle their mail and push people towards their digital communications platform. This allows the company to extort people to pay whatever prices they want just to send their loved ones a message, while the state gets to monitor every word.

MIM Distributors began sending mail to TextBehind last month only to have it returned unopened. It turns out TextBehind does not process letters from organizations, only from individuals. As an organization we would be required to set up a corporate account with non-public pricing schemes. In other words, as a member of MIM(Prisons) I cannot just put a stamp on an envelope and drop it in the mail for a comrade in NCDPS custody anymore. This is a blatant violation of our First Amendment rights to speech and association. At this time it appears that newsletters and books are still allowed through the prisons, but we will not be able to correspond with you directly, send you study guides or other information persynalized to you if you are being held by NCPDS.

UPDATE: We just had a package of ULKs returned to us from Roanoke River Correctional Institution saying, “This facility DOES NOT accept friend and family mail directly” and that we must send mail to TextBehind. But TextBehind does not accept publications, only letters that can be scanned. So it seems mail to NCDPS is being blocked on all fronts.

Pigs Bring in Drugs, While Prisoners Mail Suffers

First thing first, I am still in Wisconsin. They are making all of us have our families and comrades send personal letters and photos to the Phoenix, Maryland PO Box (189) to inspect them for drugs such as K2, even though drugs, cell phones and other contraband items come from the fascist pigs that work in these imperialist gulags. Newspapers, books, publications are still to be sent here.

I just wanted to let you know some more of the tricks the system is implementing against me via the J-Pay E-Mail/kiosk system they have set up.

It seems that anytime I send an e-mail to my loved ones asking them to contact a Court and/or government official these e-mails show up blank, yet J-Pay says these messages are being held and/or censored by the prison for reasons of “third party contact” (SMH). Imagine that, I can’t even send an e-mail to my Power of Attorney to contact the courts on my behalf as my LEGAL REPRESENTATIVE!

What would they be trying to “censor” from reaching the courts? (rhetorical question).

In other (related?) news they are also using some device to “un-download” movies I purchase from this same system shortly after I lock back into my cell. This is causing me to lose the movie sometimes due to time restrictions on them, which is a form of consumer fraud.

Note that only here on my company in Auburn Correctional Facility, have the oppressors instituted kiosk privileges 1 day per week, when Directive #4425 clearly states 15 minutes daily. Also, due to Covid restrictions we don’t have visitation privileges, so these once a week e-mails are cruel & unusual due to the already strained circumstances.

I have been debilitatingly sick here twice already taking all precautions against such especially at the times I got sick. I didn’t leave my cell outside of showers, packages & visits for approximately 6 months.

By intentionally taking away in-cell entertainment you force one outside where the chances are higher of me getting sick. Because of prior retaliation akin to this, this seems the most plausible ploy. Let me know what you think.

In Struggle.

MIM(Prisons) responds: We agree with our comrade in Virginia that there is a strategic effort to profiteer off prisoners and their families while increasing surveillance and censorship of prisoners’ communications with the outside world. The fact that you are losing movies you paid for, or others are being charged by the minute to read a book is just JPay profiteering off of control of data. It’s the same in the outside world where companies like Apple and Google lock you into a system where they can keep tempting you to spend more money and they decide what media you consume. Only in prison you have less choice.

Many prisoners write us asking to communicate on platforms like JPay, which we cannot do. These platforms increase censorship, surveillance and state control over what you can read or listen to. If we do not fight this, other states will join North Carolina in banning U.S. postal mail and materials like MIM(Prisons) study packs and resource guides.