By DALE WETZEL
The Associated Press
Texas prisoner mails court letter and maybe blood
BISMARCK, N.D. — North Dakota’s corrections department is setting up an electronic mail system for inmates this fall, to provide what officials hope will be a cheaper and less troublesome option for keeping in touch.
Three companies are competing for a contract to establish an electronic mail network for North Dakota’s adult prison system, which includes facilities in Bismarck and Jamestown; a county-run women’s lockup in New England; and the Youth Correctional Center in Mandan, which houses juvenile offenders.
Dave Krabbenhoft, the administrative director for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said the e-mail provider should be chosen this week. The corrections agency began advertising in June for a company to offer the service.
Pat Branson, deputy warden at the main state penitentiary in Bismarck, said the company that is selected will offer accounts to friends and family members who want to send messages to inmates. Prisoners will be able to write only to people who are on an approved list.
Electronic mail messages sent to inmates will be printed on paper and delivered to them, Branson said. The inmates then will use the paper to write or type a reply, which will be scanned and sent to the recipient.
The system will not replace traditional mail and phone calls, and it will not give prisoners access to the Internet, Branson said.
“Inmates don’t have computers, nor will they be getting computers,” he said.
Prison officials prefer electronic mail because the messages to inmates can be checked more easily for coded language or certain words that could indicate illegal activity, Branson said. The paper used to write regular letters also is sometimes permeated with cocaine, methamphetamine or other drugs.
With electronic mail, “we don’t have to open up envelopes, we don’t have to check the inside of envelopes for contraband,” Branson said. “You don’t even want to know how contaminated the mail is that is going into correctional facilities.”
If a message to an inmate comes in electronically and is printed for delivery, Branson said, “we know that paper came right straight out of the ream wrapper and, bam, into the printer.”
The company chosen to provide North Dakota’s e-mail system for prison inmates will be expected to provide equipment and network management, according to the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s description of the project for potential bidders.
Companies will make money by charging inmates and their friends and family members a fee for using the service. Branson said the per-message charge should be less than the 42 cents it costs to mail a letter.
“It has to be attractive,” he said. “The only way that inmates and family are going to use it is if it saves money and is attractive.”
The federal prison network and several state prison systems already allow inmates’ family members and friends to use e-mail to communicate with inmates.
Traci Billingsley, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, said 24 of the 176 facilities in the federal prison system offer access to e-mail, including minimum-security lockups in Sandstone, Minn., and Waseca, Minn., and a federal prison hospital in Rochester, Minn.
The Bureau of Prisons hopes all federal inmates will have electronic mail access by 2011, Billingsley said.
One of the three companies competing for North Dakota’s business, Advanced Technologies Group Inc. of West Des Moines, Iowa, operates the e-mail system used by federal inmates. The other two are KiteMail.net Inc., of Van Nuys, Calif., and JPay Inc., of Miami.