Minnesota prisons will no longer receive direct mail in step to stop drug smuggling
ST. PAUL, Minn. — Minnesota prisons will stop receiving direct mail on Nov. 1 after state officials announced another new step to help stop illegal drug smuggling.
Instead, all mail will be rerouted out-of-state to a company that will replicate the mail before sending it back to Minnesota.
"The cost of inaction really is the risk to people's lives," Paul Schnell, Minnesota's prison commissioner, told WCCO Investigates. "We can focus our attention in areas other than mail, which is taking and consuming massive amounts of time."
TextBehind, the company that will process mail, already has contracts with corrections departments in six other states, including Wisconsin and Michigan.
The contract will cost Minnesota taxpayers roughly $540,000 a year, but Schnell said the cost is a "wash" considering the amount of money currently being spent to scan and reprint mail on-site at just a few locations.
"We knew that from the additional staff time to the amount of leasing of machines, the toner, it was a wash from a cost standpoint and in the end may save us some resources," he said.
Starting in June, staff at Stillwater, Rush City and Faribault correctional facilities began screening, scanning and reprinting mail after investigators discovered pieces of legal and personal mail stained and contaminated with synthetic narcotics.
This incident at Stillwater, however, happened in September and led to a two-day lockdown. Nine staff members were hospitalized.
"I think it's the right call," Sgt. Staci Stone, who was one of the nine corrections officers sent to the hospital, said. "It's just one extra step to protecting ourselves, is what this means to me."
Family and friends will now address mail to a P.O. Box. A spokesman for TextBehind added that the company stores mail for at least 30 days before shredding it, then stores a digital copy for up to seven years.
The sender may request the original mail be returned.
So far this year, the Minnesota Department of Corrections says there have been at least 70 cases of suspected overdoses in state prisons, with most leading to lockdowns that frustrate inmates, staff and their families.
The DOC has stressed that its Office of Special Investigations will continue its investigation into the Stillwater incident, as well as crackdown on drug smuggling.