Out With the Bathwater: BOP Uses a Watchdog Report to Cripple Newsletters

The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) instituted a sweeping change to their e-mail policy that affects inmates and their access to information from newsletters like the federal prison newsletter that I sent from here for the past ten years. Let's talk about what happened and what happens next.

How E-mails Used to Work

The federal prison system has an e-mail network called CORRLINKS. This system allowed loved ones and people on the outside to e-mail federal prisoners and vice versa. The system is free for people on the outside but costs a fee per minute for people on the inside.

Several lawyers, paralegals, paraprofessionals, non-profits and other such persons used this system to create newsletters that were geared towards educating the prison population about changes in the law, changes in the guidelines and other matters. Such persons could assign inmates to groups in order to send multiple e-mails at once. At its height, the Federal Prison Newsletter that I sent went out to 45,000 people each week.

The 2020 WatchDog Terrorism Report

In March 2020, the Office Of the Inspector General, (OIG) an oversight agency of the BOP, issued a report titled "Audit of the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ Monitoring of Inmate Communications to Prevent Radicalization (also available for download here)."  The purpose of this report was "to review the Federal Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP) policies, procedures, and practices for monitoring terrorist inmates and the BOP’s efforts to prevent further radicalization within its inmate population."  The report is over fifty pages long and covers a wide variety of topics. Their findings, in brief were:

As of March 2018, the BOP had more than 500 incarcerated inmates with a known nexus to domestic or international terrorism (terrorist inmates). BOP policy requires that all social communications of high-risk inmates, including terrorist inmates, are monitored. However, we found that the BOP had not identified all terrorist inmates in its custody and thus did not adequately monitor their communications. Although the BOP, in 2005, began to provide the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) with a list of soon to be released inmates, we found BOP did not take appropriate steps to ensure that information about all formerly incarcerated terrorists was provided to the FBI. In addition, we found that terrorist inmates who had been placed under a Special Administrative Measure (SAM) requiring 100-percent live communication monitoring by the sponsoring law enforcement agency, which for most terrorist inmates is the FBI, were not being monitored effectively because of the technological limitations of the BOP’s monitoring capabilities. Further, between January 2015 and December 2017, we found that the BOP had not monitored or only partially monitored thousands of communications of high-risk inmates, including terrorist inmates not under a SAM directive; did not review thousands of inmate emails, some of which contained potentially concerning language; and permitted terrorist inmates to communicate with unknown or un-vetted contacts.

The report indicates in depth several places where the Bureau was not identifying and working to prevent the radicalization of "high risk inmates" as well as "terrorist inmates," as they define that term, in a number of ways. Of particular interest here is the BOP's failure to prevent inmates from receiving email from unverified and unvetted individuals:

We have serious concerns about the lack of control over email use within the BOP system, especially when it comes to use by high-risk inmates, such as terrorist inmates. Because BOP staff do not always know who terrorist and other high-risk inmates may be communicating with, we believe a significant risk exists not just to the particular institution, but to the general public as well. Through the use of email, we are concerned that inmates and their associates outside of BOP institutions can plan criminal and terrorist activities with a low risk of being discovered. Additionally, BOP staff’s concern about mass emails being directly sent to high-risk, terrorist inmates also poses a significant risk as these emails may attempt to coordinate criminal or terrorist activities within and among BOP institutions. Accordingly, we recommend that the BOP establish controls that mitigate the risk of inmates communicating with unknown and un-vetted parties, and take steps, including the utilization of available technological features as found in TRULINCS, to reduce the risk of mass emails being received by high-risk inmates, including terrorist inmates.

...

We found that the BOP also does not have sufficient control over inbound emails. Several BOP staff worried about mass emails being sent to multiple inmates’ email accounts. Because most inmates have an email account, individuals and companies can send mass emails to multiple inmates.27 BOP personnel have detected radical emails being sent to multiple inmates. BOP staff also expressed concern to us about the possibility of a mass email being sent to all inmates in a particular group such as Al Qaeda, Aryan Circle, Al-Shabaab, or ISIS inmates directing them to take coordinated action on a certain day. We agree with this concern and noted that, although the BOP has the technological capability through TRULINCS to prevent mass emails, BOP officials cited legal concerns for not utilizing such features resulting in a default situation where the BOP has chosen not to prevent mass emails from coming in to its system unless a nationwide block is put on the sender’s email address. As a result, such emails could be treated differently depending on the institution, presenting the risk of inconsistent and disjointed handling of such emails.

The TRULINCS system contains a feature that allows the BOP to block an email address from all inmates. This would be a useful feature for instances where inmates contact an email address for which the end user is unknown, inmates use another inmate’s email account, an email address is used to send mass emails to inmates, or when other misuse of the email system occurs...We found that the BOP has nationally blocked a total of 114 email addresses since 2005.

Regarding this, the OIG recommended that the BOP limit communication for high-risk inmates, including terrorist inmates. The BOP agreed with this recommendation:

Establish controls that mitigate the risk of inmates communicating with unknown and un-vetted parties and take steps, including the utilization of available technological features as found in TRULINCS, to reduce the risk of mass emails being received by high-risk inmates, including terrorist inmates.

Resolved. The BOP concurred with our recommendation. The BOP stated in its response that it will establish controls that mitigate the risk of inmates communicating with unknown and un-vetted parties and take steps, including the utilization of available technological features as found in TRULINCS, to reduce the risk of mass emails being received by high-risk inmates, including terrorist inmates.

The BOP Limits The Use of E-mails

In September of 2024 the BOP reduced the number of people who could be assigned to a group from one thousand emails to ten. This greatly hampered all such legal newsletters. In order to understand this, think of it this way:  At the height of the newsletter, there were so 45,000 inmates receiving it. The process of sending out those emails at the rate of 1000 at once, took about 30-40 minutes. to send out 4500 emails at the process of 10 at a time makes the newsletter unworkable while at the same time giving the BOP a way to plausibly state that they are not actually curtailing the newsletters from being sent. This crippled not only newsletters from lawyers and legal professionals, but also non-profit groups such as Aleph, Families Against Mandatory Minimums and others.  Many have posited that the information in this report has prompted the BOP to limit newsletters.

BOP's Limiting of E-mails is Misguided and Short Sided

There's no denying that hte BOP has the ability to identify terrorists and prevent terrorism inside its walls. But several things jump out as this report is reviewed:

The action here was four years after the report.  The report came out in March of 2020 and the block happened in September of 2024. That is four years. There is no indication that other actions were implemented before this, but as far as any prevention of e-mail radicalization, there has been no report of any subsequent remedial measure taken here. This means that any sort of harm that was happening before could have happened in the four years leading up to this action.

This action offers no way to become "known" or "verified."  According to the report, inmates were receiving emails from "unknown and unvetted" parties. And honestly, this is concerning. There was no formalized process to become vetted or known when I started sending these newsletters out. But the idea that the BOP cannot work with non-profits and even for-profits is similarly concerning. To my knowledge, the CORRLINKS system is one that is almost exclusively for federal prisons and the BOP is most likely one of largest patrons of the program, if not the largest. The idea that the BOP and ATC, the company that runs CORRLINKS, cannot develop a vetting system and change who has the ability to send mass e-mails defies logic if the BOP can successfully change the limits of group messaging from one thousand to ten. The BOP should work with lawyers, for-profit agencies and non-profit agencies to make a set of rules and regulations to allow for the vetting of groups.

This action is likely to increase frivolous litigation.  During the time of the newsletter, I sent out an occasional "rumor mill" section. That section dispelled common myths about the prison system, about time credits and about prison life generally speaking from what I know and understand. Without the newsletter, that section will not be around. But this will not prevent inmates from filing anything and everything in order to get out of prison. The inmates ultimate desire, in the overwhelming majority of cases, is to no longer be an inmate. So many will file whatever they believe they can file to get their sentence reduced. This will increase litigation, which will be frivolous in many situations, that the Department of Justice's prosecutors will have to respond to.

The way Forward for The Federal Prison Newsletter

I've listed a few ways that a compromise on the newsletter would be best for all parties involved. But the truth is that it appears unlikely for now that there will be changes. The appropriate monitors probably appreciate the reduced chatter that has followed; certain prisons such as Edgefield and even Milan blocked my newsletter even before these changes, with some prisons even using the amount of e-mails that they have received from me as being a reason to block access.

Unless and until the newsletters are readmitted, I will send what I would have sent to them via my public newsletter. You can receive that by going to my contact page and signing up. Feel free to copy and paste it to your loved ones inside and encourage them to share it with friends. Also look for big things from me on the outside in the next year.