After the 2020 pandemic temporarily shut down all visitors from seeing their loved ones in person–even behind plexiglass–the flow of contraband in prison, such as cellphones and methamphetamines, didn’t slow down a bit.
Despite Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) claiming that prisoner visitation was the main contributing factor, they seem to shun dialogue that blames staff. In an effort to further finger the public as being responsible for contraband being smuggled in prison, they have followed suit of other state prisons and made it illegal for the public to send correspondence directly to Texas prisoners.
Not only does this place another barrier between prisoners being able to touch, see, and smell things handled by their friends and families, it places a wedge between the lack of trust TDCJ has in citizens and the amount of indifference it shows towards unrestricted staff corruption and increasing amounts of violence from its own actions.
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Not only will this new rule have no effect on contraband being smuggled into prison, it increases the amount of bribes being offered to staff, and raises the price of drugs and other contraband smuggled in through more expensive routes, while making the environment more dangerous, territorial, and violently protective of money-hungry staff who will take bribes from anyone with money.
It is obvious that TDCJ has no interest in actually stemming the flow of contraband finding its way into prisons, or else they’d use easy methods such as allowing their drug- and cellphone-sniffing dogs to smell each staffer as they enter the prison, or sniff around the mail before it is placed in the mail room.
While these methods are effective, in fact they are too effective and will slack the justification they use to further separate the amount of contact prisoners have with their communities, which is both therapeutic and rehabilitative. Look at data a year from now and see how violence and drug smuggling increase.
Jason R. Walker #01532092
TDCJ Powledge unit
P.O.Box 660400
Dallas, Tx 75266-0400
3 Comments
Since you have this knowledge, why not turn the corrupt staff members in? You won’t because as a prisoner you enjoy contraband. It’s no secret that corruptions happens in prison amongst staff. That can be said about any profession. Staff at Walmart steal items, people in the Military do corrupt stuff, some people who work at gas station steal gas. You could go on and on. You can read multiple news articles of prison staff being arrested for bringing in contraband. Consequences happen for them being corrupt, so what exactly is your argument? what you tried to do is take the light off the visitors and contractors that bring stuff in. Staff are trusted to do the right thing (unfortunately they don’t always do that), visitors and Inmates are not trusted to do the right thing, hence why they have so many security measures.
He’s not “taking the light off” of visitors and contractors; he’s placing the blame for the majority of contraband exactly where it belongs: on the staff.
But it isn’t true. Most of the contraband comes in through visitors.