The rule was originally introduced under pressure from Republican lawmakers and the IDOC labor union after a series of substance exposures in the fall of 2024 left prison staff hospitalized. The policy has been in effect on an emergency basis since August.
The department sought to make the rule permanent, describing it as a necessary security precaution to prevent drugs and dangerous substances from being smuggled into jails through the mail, while critics said there is little evidence to support the rule and that it violates the civil rights of incarcerated people.
They said that reading letters from loved ones on a tablet was not the same as being able to hold the actual letter. Prison watchdog groups and legal advocates also raised data privacy concerns about the use of third-party providers and the protection of legal mail sent by attorneys.
The Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, which oversees administrative rulemaking, issued an objection to the rule in September, telling the department it needed to implement feedback from incarcerated people, families, attorneys and other stakeholders if it wanted to adopt the rule permanently.
Read more: Under emergency rule, Illinois prisons can begin holding physical mail | Oversight panel opposes new Illinois prison mail policy | Inmate Families, Advocates Speak Out Against Mail Scanning Program
After a period of public comment and stakeholder participation, the department introduced revised rules, including some exceptions for used photographs and books, as well as clarifications for legal mail. Photos must be sealed and shipped directly from a supplier. Those in custody may also receive a physical printout of their mail upon request, at no cost to the individual, under the amended rules.
JCAR decided Friday that the department had done enough to justify instituting the rule permanently, citing public participation and the changes implemented.
But advocates for incarcerated people expressed displeasure with the decision and said they saw no substantive changes reflected in the final rules.
“We are deeply disappointed with the permanent rules for mail scanning at the IDOC,” a representative from Restore Justice Illinois told reporters. “This practice lacks empirical data demonstrating its effectiveness, seriously compromises the privacy and timeliness essential to the legal mail process, and erodes the dignity, humanity and safety of people incarcerated in Illinois.”
Data availability
Critics of the policy pointed to a line in the IDOC’s initial rule proposal, which asks the department to list any published studies, reports or underlying data sources on which the rule is based. The answer said: “None.”
“So the proposed changes are not based on facts, they are reactionary and based on conjecture,” reads a public comment submitted to the department and anonymized by him. “IDOC is impacting my life in a negative and unnecessary way, again, without having anything concrete to base it on.”
Advocates asked the IDOC to wait until more data is available to show that illegal or dangerous substances arrive through the mail, rather than from other sources such as staff or in-person visits.
“It has never been clear that mail scanning will address the concerns that IDOC used to justify initiating this process months ago,” Benjamin Ruddell, criminal justice policy director for the ACLU of Illinois, told Capitol News Illinois. “Rather, the available evidence strongly suggests that mail scanning has not worked to reduce contraband or promote prison security in states where it has been implemented.”
A law signed by Governor JB Pritzker last August will require IDOC to collect and publish annual data on contraband found in its facilities, including the source of entry into the facilities. The bill passed unanimously in the Senate and with only one dissenting vote in the House, from Rep. John Cabello, R-Machesney Park. That data collection will begin in July and the first report will be published in August 2027.
However, in its analysis of the comments, the IDOC said it was “confident in its understanding of the sources of contraband entering the facilities.”
Emergency regulations
While the committee allowed IDOC to adopt this specific emergency rule as permanent, JCAR members issued a stern warning to the department against resorting to emergency rulemaking processes in the future.
“Our committee wants to be very clear that we need to end the additional use of emergency rules for these types of occasions,” JCAR co-chair Rep. Ryan Spain, R-Peoria, told department officials. “What we want to see moving forward in any rulemaking is for the ongoing rulemaking process to be used.”
Both Restore Justice and the ACLU of Illinois expressed gratitude to JCAR members and staff for their emphasis on meaningful stakeholder engagement and for their objection to IDOC’s use of emergency standards.
The ACLU promised to continue monitoring the department’s implementation of the rule.
Committee co-chairman Sen. Bill Cunningham, D-Chicago, also warned the department that more work would likely be needed to keep the rule in place.
“I don’t know if this is the final word on this matter,” Cunningham said. “As you know, there are a number of people in the state who are simply philosophically opposed to this, and I have a feeling that you will be spending time in front of the General Assembly at large over the next few months dealing with proposed legislation on this issue that could move this policy to a different position.”
Illinois Capitol News is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets across the state. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
This article first appeared in Illinois Capitol News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 4.0 International License.