In March 2020, the Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General issued a report on the concerns of mass emails through its Trulinks (also called Corrlinks) email system to the general population. The Trulinks email system is used by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) inmates to communicate with families and friends. The emails do not allow for photos or attachments, but are simply text messages that provide information and updates. Over the years, the system has been used to communicate information to a broader group of prisoners related to BOP policy, legal actions and general information on incarceration.
Prisoners in BOP custody have limited information from the outside. While there are televisions and radios, there is no access to the Internet, something all of us rely on for information and news. Trunlinks has been used by family members to send information to those incarcerated. I am aware that many people do this with these Forbes articles written here.
During COVID-19, Trulinks was used to get news to prisoners about their family’s wellbeing and to find out more information on how the spread of disease would affect the prison population. During that time, non-profit, and some for-profit groups found an eager audience to provide them with timely information on things like COVID-19, the First Step Act, and pending laws in Congress related to prisoners and criminal cases. Now the BOP is limiting the number of prisoners any one group can communicate with at any time.
The BOP issued a statement from BOP Public Affairs’ Ben O’Cone stating, “In response to an Office of Inspector General (OIG) audit of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ (FBOP) Monitoring of Inmate Communications to Prevent Radicalization (March 2020), the OIG recommended that the FBOP establish controls that mitigate the risk of individuals communicating with unknown and un-vetted parties and take steps, including the utilization of available technological features as found in TRULINCS, to reduce the risk of mass emails being receiving by high-risk individuals, including terrorists. As a result, the FBOP’s Executive Team decided to reduce the number of emails that an outside party could send into a group of incarcerated individuals to ten. This measure was taken to comply with the OIG audit.” It would seem like a more sensible approach would be to restrict the emails and improve monitoring of certain prisoners so the larger group of prisoners could continue to enjoy those newsletters.
The OIG report O’Cone was referencing stated that the BOP needs to improve its monitoring of inmate communications. The BOP provides multiple communication channels to inmates, which may include email, phone calls, postage mail, and video sessions, depending on the individual’s threat level. However, the OIG found that the BOP did not monitor all terrorist inmate communications as required by policy, and did not adequately prevent some inmates from circumventing certain communication controls. The result is that prisoners, even those who are communicating with non-terrorist prisoners, will not be able to receive email blasts of newsletters.
Non-profit groups and ad hoc criminal justice groups who support those in prison, most well-intentioned, are now concerned that they are not going to be able to provide information to people on the inside. Pamela Bailey operates her own small non-profit providing information to prisoners, many of whom are destitute and are looking for information. Bailey told me, “These people are looking for information and our organization tries to provide information they can use. Now, I’m unsure how I can continue to do this manually for thousands of people I routinely write to and provide information for in prison.”
There are a number of non-profits out there who provide essential information to prisoners about things such as changes to the Sentencing Commission recommendations, court cases and even Supreme Court cases that change the landscape of incarceration.
There are larger non-profits that routinely give insights to prisoners on various issues. Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM) often sends out information on new policies or proposed policies that could change the incarceration experience. FAMM and other groups like ALEPH, send out thousands of emails to prisoners through Trulinks to connect them to policies or other agencies who may be able to advocate on their behalf. For many prisoners, news from outside organizations not only offer hope, but needed information to let them know their rights. With the First Step Act, these organizations, and others, have been important outlets for information where the BOP has fallen short. At this critical time, when many still have questions on the First Step Act, it looks like the flow of information into prison is about to get even slower.
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