Prison Communications 2018
John Howard Association’s Prison Response Unit (PRU) provides information to prisoners because they are often cut off from obtaining materials and data from reliable sources.[1] The information services we provide include responding to questions about a wide range of criminal justice related subjects; answering questions and providing information about correctional policies and rules specific to the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC); and providing documents otherwise unavailable, including but not limited to court decisions, information packets about civil and criminal rights, laws, legislative information, state agency-issued reports, and documents filed in litigation. JHA’s PRU tracks and codes information contained within the letters received for use in our monitoring and advocacy efforts
During 2018, JHA processed[2] 13% more letters than the year prior: a total of 5,817 letters from 2,282 individuals who were housed in a prison or jail. Additionally, JHA received and responded to more than 815 calls and emails from people in the community.
Much of the PRU’s work during 2018 was dedicated to filling an information vacuum that exists within prisons and jails that adversely impacts prisoners. Our 2018 letter data suggests that IDOC’s maximum security prisons greatly struggle to meet the informational needs of prisoners; 60% of 2018’s letters came from Menard, Stateville, and Pontiac. Most of these letters were requests for legal materials, information related to statutes, and even IDOC rules, the latter of which is information that should be made readily available to prisoners within IDOC by IDOC itself. JHA is firmly dedicated to providing prisoners with critical statutory, legal, and reentry related information that they would not otherwise be able to obtain if not for JHA. However, as the quantity of letters and need for information has increased to an average of 130 letters/week, program funding and staffing have not. JHA currently lacks the resources to process all of the mail from prisoners we receive. Given the significant impact we know this program has on prisoners, JHA is actively seeking partners in our letter response work. JHA strongly emphasizes, however, that most of these letters are requests for information that should be provided by IDOC and the other law enforcement entities holding these prisoners.
Following an upward trend that began in 2016, the PRU’s work in the area of prisoner information services again increased in 2018. Of the letters from prisoners JHA responded to this past year, 80% (4,658) required an information packet in addition to a response letter – thus incurring additional stationery, printing/copying and postage costs. By comparison, 65% of JHA’s responses to letters contained an information packet last year.
JHA spends between $100-$250 weekly on postage for these responses, in addition to the cost of stationery, printing/copying, and administrative expenses. Due to this program’s rapid growth, a current week’s costs equals expenditure over a six-month period just a few years ago. Without adequate resources, we will be unable to continue to provide Illinois’ prisoners with the critical information they are seeking and the individual response that recognizes our common humanity.
The following data is a summary of the correspondence from prisoners answered by JHA during the 2018 calendar year:
The PRU mainly provides services to prisoners held by IDOC. However, JHA also responds to prisoners held by other law enforcement entities located throughout the United States. This is reflected by the “Not IDOC” category in the graph above, which includes facilities such as county jails, federal facilities, or facilities in other states. The “Other IDOC” category is composed of all IDOC facilities other than the four most frequently heard from IDOC facilities in 2018 (Menard, Pontiac, Stateville, and Western), which were also the most frequently heard from in 2017.
JHA codes letters by issues raised or the type of information requested by prisoners. A single letter may raise multiple issues or contain requests for several types of information; thus, the total numbers in the chart above exceed the number of letters processed. The top three codes for 2018 were Legal, Information, and IDOC Information, with Staff Conduct coming in fourth. The chart below goes into more detail on the most common types of information that JHA provides. Please see the glossary at the bottom of this article for more detailed definitions of categories.
Demographic Characteristics of Prisoners that Wrote to JHA in 2018
Race: The racial breakdown of prisoners that wrote JHA in 2018 is representative of IDOC’s population where race as a demographic factor is concerned.
Age: According to IDOC[3], the average age of prisoners is 38. As the graph above indicates, more prisoners older than 38 write JHA in comparison to prisoners that are 37 or younger.
Gender: We receive few letters from female prisoners. Approximately 1% of prisoners writing JHA are female, while 6% of IDOC’s population is female.