Colorado Jail Changes Postcard-Only Rule, but Boulder Digs In Its Heels

Just in time for the holidays, inmates at El Paso County jail in Colorado got a nice surprise: the ability to write letters home to family and friends. While it doesn’t seem like much, it was the subject of an ACLU lawsuit there and remains a major issue just up the road at the Boulder County jail.

You see, jail administrators in Boulder County stopped letting inmates there write letters, instead allowing them to send just five postcards a week. El Paso County inmates are now being afforded that letter writing luxury while the battle for better communication rages on in Boulder.

The ACLU filed suit in both counties on the grounds that restricting the inmates’ ability to contact family was unconstitutional. In El Paso County, the case was one day out from a U.S. District Court hearing when county officials agreed to a preliminary injunction, ending the postcard rule. ACLU of Colorado legal director Mark Silverstein said the policy “violated the rights of both prisoners and their correspondents.” Speaking on the victory, he said: “Incarcerated individuals will no longer be forced to avoid personal topics such as medical, financial, or relationship issues simply because their words were in plain sight for anyone to read.”

With the suit in Boulder County still moving forward, one has to wonder why officials there aren’t stepping up as they did in El Paso County. As I reported several months ago, Boulder County instated the postcard-only rule when they discovered two sex offenders had contacted children by hiding letters within letters. However, like I said then, had the Boulder County jail staff been doing their job correctly, those letters would have been intercepted before they even left the institution.

Institutionalization, or succumbing to the culture of incarceration, is a dangerous state and one not easily avoided when the majority of your personal contact is with other incarcerated individuals. Letters provide inmates with an outlet -- a connection to normalcy, and the ability to connect with family and friends outside of the walls of a prison. By limiting men and women to an open-face medium with only a fraction of the writing space, you are doing away with one of the few connections they have and, for some, their only private contact with loved ones.

One mother said in regards to her son: “It is impossible for Damian and I to remain as close as we were when he was able to send letters … Damian no longer sends handmade cards or drawings to his youngest siblings who cannot read, and for whom these drawings and cards were their most direct and loving form of communication with him.”

The ACLU, other organizations, activists, and inmates are all hoping Boulder County will reconsider their postcard-only rule before the case gets to litigation and taxpayers are forced to defend the worthless regulation. They could use your help. So far, over 285 Change.org members have petitioned leaders in Boulder County to once again allow their inmates to write letters. Join them. Demand Boulder County follow El Paso County’s lead and stop the pending lawsuit in its tracks.

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Photo Credit: Jerry Bradshaw