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Coming soon to NYC jails: Electronic surveillance, fees to text loved ones
By
Matt Katz
Published Feb 13, 2023
Modified Feb 16, 2023
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Matt Katz/Gothamist
By
Matt Katz
Published Feb 13, 2023
Modified Feb 16, 2023
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UPDATE: The Feb. 14 meeting of the board of correction, in which the ban on physical mail and personal packages was scheduled to face a vote, was postponed for at least a week due to technical problems with the livestream.
Under a new city contract that puts electronic tablets in the hands of Rikers detainees, correction officials can surveil correspondence using keyword searches and collect fees for some messaging services, according to documents obtained by Gothamist through a public records request.
The new details about the Department of Correction’s contract with a tablet provider have emerged on the eve of a meeting at which officials will decide whether to ban physical mail and personal packages from being sent to detainees at the Rikers Island jail complex. If the ban passes, the tablets will become a primary means for detainees to communicate with loved ones.
The proposed ban, which is up for a vote by the Board of Correction regulatory body on Tuesday afternoon, would involve scanning incoming mail and sending copies to detainees’ tablets. A second proposal calls for banning packages sent directly from loved ones, mandating that incoming packages be purchased and shipped by companies like Amazon, Target and Walmart.
The purpose is to prevent drugs including fentanyl from being soaked into paper, T-shirts and other items so they can be smoked or otherwise ingested later, according to the DOC. Advocates for detainees and drug experts have questioned this claim, noting that correction officers are regularly arrested for smuggling drugs inside.
If the proposal is approved by the Board of Correction, the prison contractor Securus Technologies would scan the mail off-site or provide scanners to department staff, according to an amendment to a contract signed last month.
Securus already provides phone services in city jails and began distributing 5,800 tablets and headsets for detainees last year, after a contract with another tablet provider was abruptly ended. The tablets now provide detainees access to educational services, a digital law library, books and radio stations.
Here are some of the newly revealed provisions of the Securus deal:
- Gives correction officers the ability to view scanned letters and stop them from being delivered to detainees.
- Charges the city for a service, called Securus Word Alert, that uses speech-to-text technology to transcribe audio from phone calls made on Securus tablets and allow “investigators to search text transcripts for specified words and phrases” that may represent security threats.
- Offers a service in which analysts for a Securus subsidiary identify “suspicious or suggestive keywords or phrases” in correspondence that may “suggest threats to security” or criminal activity within the jails.
- Provides free phone calling via tablet, which is required by law, and free text messages of no more than 160 characters apiece. More robust messaging service known as “eMessaging” will cost detainees 20 cents per message. Sending a picture costs 40 cents and a video costs 60 cents. Securus can raise those fees every year. An automated translation service for Spanish-language messages is included.
- Offers an application that allows law enforcement officers from Rikers Island to share detainee communications with officers from correctional facilities outside the city in order to identify potential threats.
Wanda Bertram, an expert on tablets in correctional facilities for the Prison Policy Initiative, reviewed the contract for Gothamist and said many of the provisions have become standard across the country as scanning mail has taken hold. She said as new laws limit or ban fees for phone calls, telecommunications companies like Securus are moving into the tablet business — 14 state prison systems are now scanning mail and sending it to inmates via tablets.
“What we’ve heard from families and organizations in those states is it creates long delays as mail piles up” in scanning facilities, she said. Scans also frequently cut off margins of pages, miss pages and copy photos with poor quality.
“The scanning of the mail is cruel, and does not serve any public safety purpose, and in turn, this company is going to get a chunk of money,” Bertram said.
While the tablets at Rikers provide religious services, education videos and e-books, Bertram worries that they will eventually replace in-person facilities, like law libraries and chapels, which can adversely affect the mental health of detainees.
Phone calls between detainees and those who are not attorneys are already monitored, and jail officials have long been able to review snail mail. But watchdogs say electronic surveillance can be more sweeping, and lacks the contextualization that a human being can provide.
The Surveillance Technology Oversight Project’s Albert Fox Cahn reviewed the contract and said it involves automated surveillance of not just those at Rikers, most of whom have not been convicted of crimes, but also the people they interact with on the outside. A message about a detainee’s child getting a new squirt gun for Christmas, for example, could result in the message being blocked.
Fox Cahn also worries about the data sharing provision of the contract, which could allow data from messages to be shared with federal agencies, like Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
This story has been updated.
Tagged
new york city
public safety
Matt Katz
Matt Katz is a former WNYC & Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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