CANAAN TOWNSHIP, PA— The United States Penitentiary (USP) Canaan, a maximum security prison in Wayne County, will take part in a federal pilot program aimed at enhancing prison security by redirecting inmates’ mail to an off-site processing facility, according to a letter the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) sent to PA politicians. 

On August 21, a number of politicians, including Sen. Pat Toomey, Sen. Bob Casey and Rep. Matt Cartwright who represents Wayne and Pike counties, asked the BOP to adopt a new mail procedure modeled after the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections’ (PADOC) own, newly adopted system. Except for legal mail, all mail sent to PA state prisons now goes to a processing facility in Florida, where it is photocopied and sent back through email. 

The letter cited several incidents at USP Canaan in which prison workers were exposed to illicit substances and hospitalized as a result; prison officials believe the drugs were snuck in through the mail. 

Sonya Thompson, the BOP’s assistant director of information, policy and public affairs, has since responded, saying that some federal prisons, including USP Canaan, are already taking steps to decrease drug smuggling risks. 

“A number of bureau facilities impacted by the increased introduction of synthetic drugs, including USP Canaan in Waymart, Pennsylvania, are currently copying mail and distributing the copies to the inmates,” she wrote. “The original correspondence is then destroyed to eliminate the threat of contraband introduction.” 

Joseph Pellicano, who has worked as a correctional officer at USP Canaan for 13 years, said that this system does not go far enough in protecting prison workers from exposure. 

“Our staff is still doing it, still touching it,” he told The River Reporter earlier this month. “Right now the [BOP] doesn’t have a system, it’s kind of like a free-for-all,”  meaning that each federal institution has come up with its own mailing procedure. 

Thompson wrote that the BOP is in the process of starting a pilot program similar to PADOC’s.

“General correspondence will be scanned off-site by a vendor and transmitted as an electronic file to inmate kiosks at the pilot sites,” she wrote. “USP Canaan is a part of this pilot.”

Pellicano said he’s concerned about the time it’s taking for the BOP to get the program underway. 

“They’ve talked about this pilot program—that [USP Canaan] is going to be the first to get— but when? A year from now?” he said. “I don’t think they need a pilot program, they just need to do it nationally.” 

In her letter, Thompson also noted such a program presents unique challenges to the bureau, given its “size and scope.” 

“The bureau inmate population is national and includes sensitive persons such as high profile inmates, cooperators and persons in security threat groups,” Thompson wrote. “As such, we must determine the level and nature of clearances that would be necessary for mail management contractors to address privacy and correctional security issues such as the contractors not being related to any federal inmates; the contractors are U.S. citizens and thus authorized to work on federal contracts; and the contractors’ personnel performing the scanning or data management or other tasks will not disclose to unauthorized individuals (e.g. media) the contents of an inmate’s mail.” 

There is ongoing disagreement, primarily between prison officials and civil rights lawyers and activists, over the actual necessity of such programs and the potential violations of inmates’ rights.

In August, Sara Rose, senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania (ACLU-PA) who was involved in a lawsuit against PADOC over its mailing procedure, told The River Reporter that concerns about prison workers getting sick from handling inmates’ mail were “way overblown” and that evidence shows that drugs get into prisons through staff and visitors more frequently than through the mail. She also referred to PADOC’s procedure as “heartless” because it restricted inmates from receiving sentimental items like handwritten letters and handmade drawings from loved ones, which she said is an important connection to the outside world that can help reduce recidivism. 

Pellicano, on the other hand, maintains that mail presents a serious risk of introducing drugs into prison populations.

“[Synthetic drugs] are very hard to detect, it’s almost like they spray it on the paper... I’ve seen guys literally chewing paper cause it’s got drugs on it,” he said. “Inmates get high all the time… it’s not overblown.”