To the letter

The city Board of Correction did something very good on Tuesday: nothing. Specifically, the board declined to even vote on proposals to limit its number of annual public meetings, and to nix letters and packages for Rikers Island detainees in favor of making detainees read their mail on tablets and only receive books and other items from approved vendors.

Anyone who’s had a substantial conversation with a person who’s spent significant time behind bars, and especially in pre-conviction detention, knows that it’s the little things that keep them going and keep them hopeful. Chief among these are the books, letters and photos from loved ones that they can hang on to.

The proposal would ostensibly maintain these communications, but in a way that was both subject to constant monitoring by Department of Correction staff and ended the detainees’ ability to retain the items they might hold dear. It left no guarantee that the DOC or private contractor Securus Technology wouldn’t flag detainees for protected speech like criticizing conditions or management.

Crucially, despite Commissioner Louis Molina’s dire warnings about packages and letters acting as a pipeline bringing drugs to Rikers, no one has produced clear evidence that this is the primary or even a significant stream of contraband. News outlet The City found that other jurisdictions that had taken the same step saw no change to their contraband levels, or even saw them increase. Much clearer is the evidence that correction officers, contractors and visitors are finding it both easy and lucrative to smuggle things in, which is why we commend Molina for taking the surely unpopular step of searching more rigorously.

The idea of tablets isn’t fundamentally a bad one, if they are a supplement. They should not be a replacement for mail, law libraries, or anything else. Fundamentally, the BOC fulfilled its function here not to be a rubber stamp for the mayor and the DOC, but to be a regulatory body for the system, and here the evidence simply didn’t exist that this would be a net positive.