‘Hope is being stripped away’: Lawmakers, advocates demand DOCCS eliminate new package policy
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Assemblymembers David Weprin, Zohran Mamdani and Eddie Gibbs, and State Senator Julia Salazar rallied alongside criminal justice advocates in front of the Queensboro Correctional Facility in Long Island City in protest of the Department of Correction and Community Supervision’s new policy limiting the types of care packages that can be sent to incarcerated people in state prisons. Eagle photo by Jacob Kaye
By Jacob Kaye
For a quarter of a century, Patrick Stevens celebrated Thanksgiving in a New York State prison.
In the weeks leading up to the holiday, Stevens said people incarcerated in the facility would begin to meet and discuss what Thanksgiving goods they’d be receiving from their family and friends. They’d create an ad hoc committee, put together a menu and figure out how they – each of them separated from their loved ones – could celebrate the holiday together.
As a result of the state’s Department of Correction and Community Supervision’s new limits on packages, that tradition has now been broken, Stevens said while standing in front of the Queensboro Correctional Facility in Long Island City on Tuesday.
Stevens was one of a handful of advocates to be joined by state lawmakers in Queens to “demand” DOCCS rescind its recently enacted policy on how and what types of packages can be sent to people incarcerated in New York prisons.
“The men and women who are incarcerated, they need their packages back, they need to feel connected to the family members – it's as simple as that,” Stevens said.
DOCCS changed its package policy in April, after the agency, which is headed by Commissioner Anthony Annucci, said that packages were becoming the main avenue for smuggling contraband into correctional facilities – a fact that has been up for debate throughout the state in recent years. Just this week, a former corrections officer with the city’s Department of Correction, told a federal court that he regularly smuggled drugs into Rikers Island to be sold and consumed by detainees there, Gothamist reported.
Though there were already restrictions and safety precautions in place surrounding the types of packages incarcerated New Yorkers could receive, DOCCS changed its policy so that packages could only be purchased and sent through third-party vendors. Packages sent directly from family and friends of incarcerated people – filled with goods purchased directly by the families and friends of incarcerated people – are no longer allowed.
Advocates and lawmakers say that as a result of the policy change, incarcerated people are having more difficulty receiving fresh fruits and vegetables through the mail, which they say is necessary to supplement the food they’re given in the mess halls of the state’s prisons.
More importantly, they say the policy puts unnecessary financial burdens on both incarcerated individuals and their families, many of whom have little extra funds to spare. Families are now required to pay shipping costs determined by the vendor, as opposed to bringing the package to the facility themselves. And for incarcerated people, the policy has pushed them toward purchasing goods from prison commissaries, which often sell goods at an inflated rate, advocates say.
“DOCCS has erected a wall between incarcerated people and their families,” said Queens Assemblymember David Weprin, who chairs the Assembly’s Committee on Corrections. “I thought DOCCS is supposed to rehabilitate incarcerated people, not isolate them from their families.”
“These cruel practices impact morale, and instill further trauma,” he added. “Home packages offer hope for incarcerated persons, but now that hope is being stripped away, packages from their children are being stripped away. DOCCS, how is this an effective policy?”
Lawmakers and advocates say that a new state policy on the types of packages that can be sent to incarcerated people causes further isolation on those locked up in state prisons. Eagle photo by Jacob Kaye
This isn’t the first time the state correction agency has changed its policy on packages.
In 2018, the agency required that packages be purchased and sent by six pre-approved vendors, New York Focus reported. The policy was subject to many of the same complaints made by advocates and lawmakers about the current program.
After 10 days, then-Governor Andrew Cuomo told DOCCS to rescind the policy.
But an altered version of the program began to be piloted over the summer in a select number of facilities. Thought the new program, like the old, doesn’t allow for home packages to be sent to incarcerated people, it is no longer required that families purchase packages through a limited number of pre-selected vendors. Items can be purchased and shipped through any third-party vendor as long as the vendor isn’t featured on the agency’s disapproved vendor list.
In June, Weprin and State Senator Julia Salazar, who chairs the Crime Victims, Crime and Correction Committee in the Senate, wrote a letter to Annucci urging DOCCS to reassess the programs.
In the letter, the lawmakers cited a number of concerns, including the financial burden put on families of incarcerated people, the inability to purchase stable foods and fresh fruits and vegetables, the impact on small businesses and hardships on incarcerated people with dietary restrictions, be they physical or religious.
“We’re calling on DOCCS to rescind fully this cruel policy that is not in the interest of keeping individuals safe,” Salazar said this week.
The lawmakers’ concerns were echoed by formerly and currently incarcerated people, and their families at the rally on Tuesday.
A man incarcerated at the Eastern Correctional Facility in Ulster County, who had pre-recorded a message prior to Tuesday’s press conference, said that overall, the price to get goods shipped to incarcerated people has increased by $5 to $10. Additionally, it’s become increasingly more likely that fresh fruits and vegetables don’t arrive intact and have begun to rot by the time they reach an incarcerated person.
“At the end of the day, this creates a hardship for a lot of families who don't really have the finances to supplement what they used to send to their loved ones with these pricey vendors,” he said.
According to a DOCCS spokesperson, “the program is working.”
The agency says it has seen an 81 percent drop in the number of contraband items discovered in prison package rooms since the start of the program over the summer. There has also been a 21 percent decrease in the number of instances Narcan has been used when compared to last year, the spokesperson said.
“The safety and well-being of staff and incarcerated individuals is the Department's top priority,” the spokesperson said. “DOCCS implemented the vendor package program upon recommendation of the Prison Violence Task Force, which sought to improve facility security for incarcerated individuals and staff by addressing the significant increase in number of packages found to contain contraband drugs and weapons. The presence of contraband in correctional facilities exacerbates violence and enables illicit drug use.”
The correction agency also said that it has been providing personal hygiene products, including tampons, sanitary napkins, panty liners, soap, toilet paper, toothbrushes and toothpaste, upon request and free of charge to incarcerated individuals who may have otherwise received those items in care packages.
However Salazar and Weprin say they’ve received numerous complaints from incarcerated people and their families since the start of the program saying otherwise. The two lawmakers vowed this week to introduce legislation that would alter the policy should DOCCS not change it before the legislative session begins in January.
“DOCCS claims that commissaries are filled with daily essentials, but my office, and I know Senator Salazar's office, has received consistent complaints to the contrary,” Weprin said.
At the core of many of the complaints over the program advocates and lawmakers made on Tuesday was the emotional effect it has on the incarcerated population.
“It heightens the isolation of individuals who are incarcerated, and we know that isolation is a precipitating factor for violence,” said Queens Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani.
Stevens said that while he was incarcerated, his mother, who lived in Florida, would regularly send him mangoes, one of his favorite foods. If he were incarcerated today, his mother would be unable to send them to him.
He said receiving the fruits was “a miracle.” Though he’d keep most of the mangoes for himself, he’d give a few out to his friends. And he’d save one to put on his windowsill.
“Just because it smells good,” he said. “Just to remember what my mother did for me.”
