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Inmates, Families Connect By E-Mail

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The Associated Press

Published: August 17, 2008

MIAMI - When Melvin Garcia was sent to prison almost a decade ago on a racketeering conviction, he had never used a computer. Now he sends 50 e-mails a month from a federal prison in West Virginia, punctuating notes with emoticons.

Garcia, 38, is among thousands of prisoners at more than 20 federal facilities where inmates have inboxes. By spring 2011, all 114 U.S. prisons are expected to have e-mail available for inmates.

The program, started several years ago, has reduced the amount of old-fashioned paper mail that can sometimes hide drugs and other contraband. As important, officials say, e-mail helps prisoners connect regularly with their families and build skills they can use when they return to the community.

For Garcia, that means learning the computer.

"LET'S JUST SAY THAT MY PREVIOUS EMPLOYMENT DIDN'T REQUIRE IT :o)," he joked in a recent e-mail.

The system inmates use isn't like programs in most offices and homes. Inmates aren't given Internet access. All messages are sent in plain text with no attachments allowed. Potential contacts get an e-mail saying a federal prisoner wants to add them to their contact list and must click a link to receive e-mail, similar to accepting a collect call from a lockup.

Once approved, prisoners can send messages only to those contacts and cannot type any address and hit send. Contacts can change their minds and take their names off a prisoner's list.

Warden Scott Middlebrooks at Coleman federal prison northwest of Orlando said his inmates sent more than 3,200 messages and received some 2,800 a day last month through the system called TRULINCS, which is run by Iowa-based Advanced Technologies Group Inc.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons says the system pays for itself with some of the proceeds from prison commissaries. Inmates also pay 5 cents per minute while composing or reading e-mails.

Despite possible delays for security screens, prisoners and their families say e-mail is far faster than paper mail. Previously, it could take Garcia two days to get urgent news from fiancee Rita Torres. Her express mail letters letting him know that a friend had been in a car accident and that a relative had had a miscarriage were delayed.

Now, she e-mails him three times a day and gets about as many e-mails back.

"Receiving an e-mail is like receiving a letter," William Nerlich, a federal prisoner in Georgia who has another six years to serve on a weapons charge, wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press. "It makes you happy to be thought of."

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