At United States Penitentiary, Tucson, where I’m incarcerated, we have been having trouble receiving our mail for years. 

There have been thousands of complaints by the prisoners here at this Arizona facility. Legal documents arrive open. Magazines or books are not received, even though the tracking numbers show they arrived at the facility. 

Many believe that staff are obstructing the delivery of the mail, but it’s difficult to prove that. Staff point the finger at the U.S. Postal Service for both incoming and outgoing mail delays. But if that were the case, Tucson city residents would also have been impacted, and there would likely be news reports about it. I have seen none.

Timely delivery of mail is important to us; it’s the only reliable way we have to communicate with the outside world. It’s especially critical because we don’t have email. Even though we are prisoners, we still have First Amendment rights. Arguably, our rights are being infringed if our ability to communicate is unreasonably delayed. 

How can we prove that the mailroom and the administrative staff might be responsible? 

The Federal Bureau of Prisons mail management manual states the following as its purpose and scope: “To implement procedures for processing all official inmate mail as expeditiously and economically as possible.”

Under Section 3.7, it reads, “Delivery of letters may not be delayed and ordinarily will be made within 24 hours of receipt, excluding weekends and holidays.” 

In section 3.16, which regulates outgoing mail, it reads: “Ordinarily, all outgoing letter mail will be processed within 24 hours, excluding weekends and holidays.”

In an email to a Prison Journalism Project editor, a spokesperson from the Federal Bureau of Prisons reiterated the above time frame, writing: “All incarcerated individuals are afforded prompt access to regular U.S. Postal, special, and legal mail. … Mail is processed expeditiously and efficiently.” 

It’s not uncommon for me to send out as many as 30 letters in one day. I have written over 500 essays, and I am always sending them out to colleges, universities, ministries and churches, elected officials, advocacy groups and media, as well as family and friends. 

I decided to run an experiment to see if these rules are being followed. 

First, some context. At USP Tucson, the procedure for mail goes as follows:

• I deposit my mail — unsealed, as prescribed by prison rules — in the prisoner mailbox in the common area of my dorm.
  
• Each weekday, after we are all counted at 10 p.m., an officer unlocks the mailbox and empties it out. They appear to randomly scan a few letters to make sure they are compliant.
  
• Once they get all the letters, they seal them with tape, by the adhesive on the envelope, or by folding the flap inside. They then put them in a large red bag and give it to another officer, who collects all the mail bags from the various dorms and delivers them to the administrative offices, where they are supposed to be mailed out the following weekday. 

If I drop in a letter on Wednesday, it should be leaving the compound on Thursday. If it’s a Friday, it would not be sent out until the following week. 

That’s why I have specific mailing days: Thursdays and Sundays. I refer to them as my action days. I send out mail on Thursday to get it off the compound on Friday. I mail letters next on Sunday nights, so they leave on Mondays. 

As part of my experiment, I began recording the date I placed my letters in the inmate mailbox on the bottom left of the envelope. I also handwrote every address on the envelopes, rather than using labels as the prison demands, because we have heard that the prison’s scanner turns the labels black and illegible.

My intention was to create a record tracking the time between when I sent my letters out and when the U.S. Postal Service postmarked them. My assumption is that our postal system processes mail immediately after receiving it. 

For example, if I dated a letter on March 3, and the recipient tells me that the postmark on the envelope was March 10, then I could hypothesize that the prison likely held on to my letter for seven days, a violation of the federal policy. 

For the experiment, I picked reliable recipients, people to whom I write often. I sent them a series of letters on Thursdays, Sundays and Tuesdays over a period of several months. 

My results were as follows:

I also sent out letters consecutively on March 24, 25 and 26, all of which were postmarked on April 2. This told me that they received all the letters at the same time. 

This implies that USP Tucson is holding mail and sending it out in bulk periodically.

In their email, the BOP spokesperson said: “While we do not comment on anecdotal allegations, nor are we able to verify the authenticity of the dates provided or specify a reason for any delay during the noted timeframe, we can inform you that there currently are no unjustified delays in the processing of mail at the Federal Correctional Complex (FCC) Tucson.” (USP Tucson is part of the larger FCC Tucson.)

The BOP also mentioned that “some inmates may require being placed on a Required Monitoring status, a status in which all of the inmate’s social communications, to include written correspondence, emails and phone calls are reviewed for intelligence purposes, and translated as needed, prior to distribution.” If this is true, people should be informed of that. 

The results of my experiment provide reasonable proof that we are being prevented from timely communication with the outside world.