since perfume and stickers count as suspicious

March 2, 2020 9:40 AM

No Glitter, No Glue, No Meth? Can Texas prisons really stop contraband by banning greeting cards? [The Marshall Project]
posted by readinghippo (8 comments total)

The agency spokesman said that guards are not often responsible for smuggling, pointing out that only 53 of the agency’s more than 21,000 officers were caught with contraband in 2019, while 300 visitors were flagged for contraband over the same period.

All this means is that the guards are focused on catching visitors rather than their coworkers, because of course they are: if you were a guard smuggling in contraband, of course you would redirect attention elsewhere and keep on making money. Guards are most of the issue and everyone knows it, this is just another bullshit excuse to make life harder for people in prison and their loved ones.
posted by bile and syntax at 10:09 AM on March 2, 2020 [10 favorites]

Prison spokesman Jeremy Desel said he could not provide data showing how often officials find drugs in the mail, but maintained it happens often. “If it happens once, it is preventable,” he added.

Sure, if you don't care about the costs of prevention; if those costs don't fall on you or on people you care about. (Though of course it won't work because you don't get significant contraband coming in on glittery birthday cards.)
posted by jeather at 10:36 AM on March 2, 2020

Seems to be that rather than making greeting cards illegal, they could stop the flow of contraband better by just banning guards

but that would take a progressive society that sees incarceration as a path to atonement, rather than a way to keep undesirables locked away forever
posted by caution live frogs at 11:10 AM on March 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

Or like... change the culture around prisons and guarding so that it's actually about rehabilitation, pay guards enough that smuggling contraband in isn't something anyone needs to do to supplement income, increase the penalty for it, and institute penalties for knowing about it and not doing anything, institute substantive preventative and maintenance healthcare in prisons, and stop using prisons to warehouse people with disabilities?

Or we could make sure that they can't have greeting cards, I'm sure that'll help.
posted by bile and syntax at 12:09 PM on March 2, 2020 [5 favorites]

I went into the article surprised that they aren't mandating low-quality cards at a 300% markup over retail through a no-bid contract as the only way to communicate with loved ones...

soon families will have the option to buy cards from a third-party vendor
Oh goddammit.
posted by sysinfo at 5:43 PM on March 2, 2020 [12 favorites]

As a crafter, this depresses me. Also I thought what sysinfo did.
posted by jenfullmoon at 6:08 PM on March 2, 2020 [1 favorite]

Well if you watch TV in your hotel room, you can watch hours and hours of prison shows that show how terrible all the inmates are, (many of which seem to be, most having serious mental health issues), and they can show you all the awesome staff are just trying to do their jobs. There was lots of, "look at how they soaked the card in meth" segments, which is the first time I'd ever thought about such a thing.
posted by Windopaene at 8:21 PM on March 2, 2020

Weirdly, I'm going to come in and defend Lockup, which, while it obviously has a pro-CO slant, runs so much actual prisoner footage (including giving them their own cameras, in certain circumstances) that it sort of accidentally smuggles a lot of interesting perspectives out.
posted by praemunire at 9:58 AM on March 3, 2020