pROTECT PRISON CALLS

The Florida Department of Corrections is once again attempting to further alienate the incarcerated. In a new proposed rule change, they are threatening to implement several new barriers for phone use at a correctional institution.

Alarmingly, communication between lawyers and incarcerated people is at risk, as the Florida Justice Institute explains below:

This rule will make it difficult or impossible for incarcerated people to consult with lawyers.  For instance:

It would be difficult for incarcerated people to consult with lawyers about their rights, and obtain legal representation about critical matters like prison conditions, post-conviction motions, innocence claims, and criminal appeals.

Advocacy organizations like us would have a hard time to inform incarcerated people about their rights and hold Florida accountable for unconstitutional conditions of confinement.

What can you do?

The Florida Justice Institute has provided a pre-made, pre-addressed email you can send to the Florida DOC to express your dissent. Find it below:

You can help oppose this rule change by clicking here to send an email to the FDC.

Additionally, you can register for the virtual public hearing on 2/17 at 1PM EST and voice your dissent.

Finally, you can contact your state legislators (at the state level) and let them know they cannot let this rule change pass.

protect prison mail

Despite our best efforts, the Florida Department of Corrections has begun to digitize nearly all incoming mail to incarcerated people as of December 2021. This rule change has made it so that every piece of an incarcerated person’s incoming mail is scanned, destroyed, and digitally sent to their (often faulty) tablet.

This measure is cruel, dehumanizing, and unnecessary, as well as a threat to our program and programs like ours that rely on snail mail to communicate with our students.

However, all is not lost. The campaign to ban mail digitization in federal prisons is still active, and you can help! Sign Just Detention International’s Protect Prison Mail petition for federal prisons — non-Florida residents can do this too.

Watch the video by Just Detention International to understand the importance of this lifeline incarcerated people have to the outside and how removing it would have deep consequences.