Get Access to E-Mail

When Federal prison inmate Ronald Rosenberg was sent to Devens prison almost seven years back for failing to pay revenue taxes, he hadn't used a PC. Today he sends twenty e-mails a month from a federal prison in Massachusetts.

Rosenberg is among thousands of Federal prisoners at more than twenty Federal prisons where inmates now have access to a sort of e-mail. By early 2011, all 114 Federal prisons will have e-mail ready to inmates. The program, started many years back, has reduced the quantity of old skool paper mail that will often hide drugs and other contraband. Just as important, Federal prison officials say, e-mail helps prisoners connect frequently with their families and build skills they can use when they return to the community.

For inmates like Rosenberg, that suggests learning the PC. The system Federal prison inmates use isn't like programs employed in most offices and houses. Inmates are not given Net access, and all messages are sent in plain text, with no attachments permitted. Potential contacts get an e-mail asserting a Fed prisoner wants to add them to their contact list and must click a link to get e-mail, like accepting a collect call from a local lockup.

Once licensed, Federal prisoners can only send messages to those contacts – they cannot just type in any address and hit send. And contacts can change their mind at any point and take their name off the prisoner's list. One Federal prison warden his inmates sent more than two thousand messages and received some three thousand a day last month through the system, which is known as TRULINCS.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) says the system pays for itself with some of the results of Federal prison commissaries. Inmates also pay five cents per minute while composing or reading e-mails. Security, naturally, is a concern. This is after all Federal prison inmates we are talking about.

That is the reason why the messages can be screened for keywords that suggest an inmate might be concerned in a crime, or read by a guard, just like paper letters. That will make a delay between when messages are sent and received.

Notwithstanding probable delays for security screens, Federal prisoners and their families say e-mail is still far quicker and faster than paper mail. The e-mails don't replace calls, but those are restricted to five hours a month. And Rosenberg still sends letters because writing late in his cell is a technique to pass the time. What e-mail does, however, is provide another link to the outside for Rosenberg and other Federal prison inmates.