Beginning next month, all personal mail for Humboldt County Correctional Facility inmates must be sent to Maryland where it will be digitized and only available to view on a tablet.
The Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office said the change is necessary to prevent drugs from entering the jail.
Capt. Duane Christian said banning physical mail is just the latest security update following the spread of fentanyl, which can cause an overdose in small amounts. Several years ago the jail added a body scanner. Recently, officers added barriers around the facility’s recreation yard to prevent inmates from getting contraband over the fence.
Christian said paper at the jail has tested positive for narcotics before.
Digitizing inmate mail is a growing trend at jails across the country, said Cara Gagliano, an attorney with the privacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation.
She said the practice raises privacy concerns. Companies can store scanned correspondence for years, she said, and that can have a chilling effect on speech.
“We've talked to a lot of people, our clients included, who stopped sending mail because they didn't want it to be scanned and put in this database,” Gagliano said.
ViaPath Technologies, the company that provides tablets to Humboldt County’s jail, is also in charge of the scanning service.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation unsuccessfully sued San Mateo County for its banning of physical mail at jails. Gagliano said they plan to appeal.
She said the policy can also have negative effects on an inmate’s mental health and even increase recidivism.
“You can't receive prayer cards that you would keep with you to look at... when you're having a hard moment,” she said.
Christian said concerns, including those over privacy, were weighed against the danger of drugs in the jail.
“I don't want to minimize the impact that it has, not actually holding a letter from family members,” he said. “But when we looked at everything…you can just do a Google search of jail overdoses and see the difference over the past couple years.”
The sheriff’s office said soft cover books sent directly from retailers will be allowed.
