Utah prisons using new facility to process inmate mail
Jan 16, 2025, 7:00 AM | Updated: 2:13 pm
FILE: The men’s general population building is pictured at the Utah State Prison in Salt Lake City on Oct. 21, 2021. Salt Lake and Gunnison using new mail screening system. (Kristin Murphy, Deseret News)
(Kristin Murphy, Deseret News)
SALT LAKE CITY — Utah State Correctional Facilities are using a new mail screening system to prevent inmates from receiving contraband.
According to Spencer Turley, an assistant director in the Utah Department of Corrections, the new system routes incoming mail to a processing facility in Las Vegas.
Related:Utah State Correctional Facility library gives inmates a slice of life
“We’ve been trying to identify a way [to] help reduce the contraband coming in,” said Turkey. “We found a vendor that acts as a third party to help us process our mail. [This helps us] reduce drugs and other forms of contraband coming into the prison.”
He said the department already screens inmate mail. But despite employee and K9 screening, he said some drugs were still getting through.
“They were trying to hide it in the creases and the corners of the envelope,” said Turley. “[Sometimes the contraband was] papers that were soaked in a substance of some kind. It was hidden behind a stamp. In just a variety of ways, they were trying to get it in.”
The new system
Now, instead of sending mail directly to an inmate, it first goes to a P.O. box in Las Vegas. Then, the vendor makes a copy.
[They] screen and replicate it,” Turley said.
“They’ll make a photocopy of it if it’s a handwritten letter. [If it’s] they would then print out. Or if it’s some type of postcard or a greeting card, they’ll replicate that on similar paper.”
Turley said, “It could take one or two days longer to get a letter to an inmate but it shouldn’t be substantial.”
“The vendors’ commitment to us and to the inmate families, is that everything they receive is processed within 24 hours. [It’s then] sent directly back up to the inmate.”
Related: Utah’s state prisons both led by women for the first time
Benefits to the mail screening
Turley said there are some benefits to this new system.
“Because of the contraband that was coming in, we previously couldn’t allow inmates to have certain things. Like greeting cards and things that were on really thick colored paper or even like a child, that was drawing a picture or coloring a picture in crayon because they … often had contraband laced into them. Well now under this new process those things will be allowed. So inmates are going to be able to get more things and they previously couldn’t.”
Turley said they’ve been using this new system for a little over a week. Other than an address glitch they’ve fixed, there haven’t been any problems.
