New York’s crackdown on bodily mail in state prisons was supposed to assist stem the stream of fentanyl and different harmful medication behind bars.
However the variety of instances jail employees administered Narcan after suspected overdoses jumped 51% final 12 months, whereas deadly overdoses stay properly above the extent recorded earlier than the mail restrictions, based on Division of Corrections and Group Supervision knowledge compiled by the Correctional Affiliation of New York.
In August 2021, jail officers banned most bodily mail, arguing that drug-laced letters and packages had been a serious supply of contraband.
Since then, overdose deaths have risen from two in 2021 to 11 in 2022, six in 2023 and 12 in every of the previous two years, the information reveals.
The newest figures are being interpreted in several methods by jail officers, civil rights advocates and correction officers’ unions.
Jail reform advocates are calling on the state to rethink the mail restrictions, arguing that they’ve didn’t cease medication from reaching incarcerated individuals whereas imposing pointless limits on their means to speak with household and mates.
They notice that each one guests are required to stroll by way of physique scanners in every of the state’s 41 services whereas officers can merely resolve in the event that they need to be screened. (State regulation prevents the division from forcing correction officers to undergo physique scanners; they’ll refuse “for medical or different causes” and go for different strategies of screening.)
“Make that make sense,” mentioned Michelle Bonet, who based the advocacy group NYS DOCCS Federal Oversight to assist incarcerated individuals and their households.
“It’s very clear that contraband is a matter,” she added, “and it is vitally clear that (jail officers) put it to use as a way to impose measures that then justify what they’re doing to the incarcerated individuals as a part of a fearmongering marketing campaign, utterly dominated by the union.”
Nicole March, a DOCCS spokesperson, defended the mail restriction, and mentioned there’s “nobody cause for the adjustments within the overdose deaths from 12 months to 12 months.”
The varieties of medication and the way they’re used “have modified” over time, she added. Some prisoners now smoke paper soaked in medication, a difficulty that has plagued lockups all through the nation.
Consequently, the division has strengthened its “contraband interdiction efforts” by boosting screening and investigative measures, March mentioned.
James Miller, a spokesperson for the New York State Correction Officers Benevolent Affiliation, didn’t reply to an e mail searching for remark.
‘Harmful for Everybody’
In April, the union despatched a letter to Gov. Kathy Hochul saying the division was in a “systemic emergency,” citing a number of incidents of officers injured by prisoners — and by way of contact with unknown medication.
“This isn’t regular,” the union’s letter mentioned. “These aren’t routine disciplinary points. They’re unmistakable warning indicators of a correctional system below excessive strain — one that’s changing into more and more unstable and harmful for everybody who lives and works behind the partitions.”
The newest knowledge covers 2025, when hundreds of state correction officers went on strike after a number of of their colleagues had been indicted for his or her alleged roles in fatally beating a handcuffed prisoner, Robert Brooks, in a jail infirmary.
The division says it fired 2,000 officers who refused to come back again to work and it hasn’t been capable of exchange and increase a lot of them but. Earlier this month, there have been roughly 3,000 Nationwide Guard members offering help in 32 state correctional services.
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The dearth of employees has meant persons are spending much more time of their cells as a result of there’s not sufficient officers to oversee out of cell time, mentioned Sumeet Sharma, the Director of Coverage and Communications for the Correctional Affiliation of New York (CANY).
On the Coxsackie Correctional Facility, prisoners are solely leaving their cells for just a little over an hour for recreation time every day, a current CANY evaluate discovered.
“We all know that folks being confined to their cells for a very long time has an impression on their psychological well being,” mentioned Sharma. “Anecdotally, individuals informed us that spending a variety of time of their cells means individuals don’t have anything to do, after which look to make use of substances or take different actions.”
As for the rise in Narcan use, March, a DOCCS spokesperson, famous that division employees are instructed to manage the possibly lifesaving remedy “at any time when a person is discovered unresponsive, whatever the suspected trigger.”
However she additionally acknowledged that intoxications and overdoses have elevated all through the division’s 41 services, contributing to the rise in Narcan use.
One jail professional recommended the state take a extra focused strategy, limiting mail restrictions to services the place drug overdoses and contraband have gone up.
“Blocking paper does assist, not less than initially,” Dean Williams, who previously headed jail methods in Alaska and Colorado, informed The Metropolis Reporter. “It interrupts the established or routine manner medication have been funneled into jail.”
However Williams mentioned he tried to keep away from utilizing such restrictions as a type of collective punishment until completely needed.
Instead, he blocked bodily mail at prisons with excessive charges of drug smuggling whereas permitting home made letters at different services.
Smuggler’s Tales
The strategy raises a fundamental query: The place are the medication coming from?
The New York jail system — like most correctional methods across the nation — has by no means performed a complete evaluate of how medication enter its services.
However consultants say it’s clear that medication aren’t coming solely by way of the mail or from guests. In the course of the peak of the pandemic, when jail visits had been canceled for months, medication and different contraband continued to make their manner into lockups.
“I knew that one corrupt employees might do great injury,” Williams mentioned. “Due to this fact, my crew took a really aggressive stance on the investigation facet of the equation.”
New York State has some current examples.
In March, a correction officer at Cayuga Correctional Facility, a medium safety jail close to Syracuse, was arrested after a drug-detection canine caught him with about 28 grams of cocaine and 10 grams of heroin packaged in roughly 50 paper sleeves, based on police.
In one other current case, a former correction officer at Woodbourne Correctional Facility was indicted on allegations that he repeatedly smuggled methamphetamine and cellphones into the jail in change for cash, based on the Sullivan County district legal professional.
Fewer Jail Assaults
The current New York knowledge wasn’t all dangerous information.
The variety of so-called uncommon incidents — together with all the things from assaults on prisoners and employees to tried escapes — throughout the state jail system fell 9% in 2025.
And, the variety of assaults on correction officers fell 15%, whereas assaults on incarcerated individuals declined 11%.
Contraband incidents additionally decreased by 9%, together with a 17% drop in weapons-related contraband.
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“That’s implausible information,” mentioned Michele Deitch, director of the Jail and Jail Innovation Lab on the College of Texas at Austin.
“These are all nice indicators,” she added. “Is it a long-term pattern? Is it a blip? We don’t know. And why is it occurring at this level?”
The variety of assaults went down, partially, as a result of all officers now have physique cameras and there are fewer interactions between officers and prisoners as a result of so many individuals are caught of their cells for longer durations attributable to employees shortages, based on CANY’s Sharma.
“Once you simply have much less individuals coming into contact with one another,” he mentioned, “I’d think about that that will result in much less uncommon incidents, particularly in relation to assaults.”
