The Perils of Prison Mail Digitization

An episode of the The Final Straw Radio podcast, hosted by The Final Straw Radio, titled "The Perils of Prison Mail Digitization" was published on December 12, 2021 and runs 65 minutes.

December 12, 2021 ·65m · The Final Straw Radio

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Episode Description

Leigh Lassiter from prison books collective in Durham, North Carolina, a nonprofit project that sends zines and books to prisoners in Alabama in North Carolina prisons and jails comes on this week to tell us about recent changes by the NCDPS to use the private company TextBehind to scan all incoming and outgoing mail track, their contents surveil the outside users and mailers, and to make a profit on an already indigent population. We also talk about the work of sending literature, to incarcerated folks privatization and digitization of other services, and what literature gets rejected. More about the press books collective at PrisonBooks.Info or check out their linktr.ee

You can also check out local books to prisoners projects in your area that you could get involved with by visiting PrisonBooks.Org/PrisonBooksNetwork. There're also a couple of really good articles from The Intercept about this and related surveillance services topics within you as prisons and jails.

"Prisons Across The US Are Quietly Building Databases of Incarcerated People's Voice Prints" by George Joseph and Debbie Nathan
"Federal Prisons Switch To Scanning Mail In A Surveillance Nightmare" by Lauren Gill

Or check out the following resources:

Zine Updates

Just a reminder, a comrade's been compiling our zines into a catalog, for easy mailing into prisons. You can check out the latest, December 2021 list at the top of https://TFSR.WTF/Zines as a pdf.

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