By Amy Lindholm, Management Analyst, Friend of the Court Bureau
Across the various agencies that make up our child support
program, across counties, and even across other state programs, we share a
common frustration in the difficulty of communicating effectively with the
parents we serve. Mentioning “bad addresses” conjures up a lot of emotion. We
are always trying to find a way to better encourage parents to proactively
update their personal information with us. And communicating with our
incarcerated population of parents presents another layer of difficulty.
In working with the Michigan Department of Corrections
(MDOC)’s collaborative workgroup called “Project Clean Slate” over the past few
years, I have learned a lot about prison communication restrictions that I
never knew when I was a friend of the court caseworker. More recently as a
result of the automatic child support abatement work, I discovered more
specific details and realized that these are not common knowledge to many of us
in child support and other domestic relations work.
Access to Justice
One important piece to consider is access to justice afforded to prisoners. Many of our courts and offices are increasingly moving to electronic communications and filings – which is a great improvement in efficiency and accessibility for most court users. Prisoners, however, do not have access to the internet or to regular email accounts (only JPay electronic messaging – see below). Court forms might be made available at a given MDOC facility, but there is variability in that practice and in the types of forms made available.
Michigan Legal Help is an immense resource with whom we are
lucky to partner and refer litigants, especially self-represented litigants. This
wealth of information can help litigants understand how to take appropriate
action to achieve their desired outcome, and many motion forms even have a
step-by-step tool to guide litigants through completing the form.
Unfortunately, this resource is not accessible to prisoners. Anecdotally, I hear
that prisoners who write to a court requesting a motion form sometimes receive
responses indicating they should go online to MichiganLegalHelp.org or other agency
web sites to print the forms. While interagency conversations are beginning
about how to enable access to online court forms and MichiganLegalHelp.org, it
is not a possibility for MDOC prisoners
today.
Sending documents to prisoners by mail remains a viable
communication option, but there are some important things to understand about
what happens to mail when it arrives at an MDOC prison. Some are relatively
straightforward, such as any staples or paperclips will be removed so they
cannot be used as weapons. Less straightforward are confidentiality protocols
and return envelopes.
Confidentiality and “Legal Mail” According to MDOC
All incoming mail will be
opened, but certain mail is eligible for “special handling” if it qualifies as
legal mail and the prisoner has requested his/her
legal mail receive special handling. Prisoners only need to make this request
once during their time in MDOC custody and are prompted to do so when they
first enter, but they can also request it at any other time. Assuming the
prisoner has made this request, any mail marked as sent by a court, friend of
the court, prosecuting attorney, attorney general, and a few other categories
of senders will be given special handling, which means the mail is opened but
not read.
Some offices have indicated concerns about sending
confidential case or financial information to a prisoner such as account
financial statements, wondering if there might be a violation of confidentiality
standards. Offices should ensure the mail is sent according to State Court
Administrative Office and Office of Child Support address and mail policies
(e.g. sending to the address on file, double-enclosing and marking
appropriately if any tax information is included, etc.).
Return Envelopes
When expecting a prisoner to send something back, you may
include a self-addressed, stamped envelope. Do not use an adhesive stamp or any
other adhesives. By MDOC policy, any envelope with an adhesive will be discarded
by the mail processing unit because adhesives could be lined with drugs.
Therefore, the envelope must be meter stamped.
Phone Calls and Electronic Messaging
MDOC prisoners generally have phone and electronic messaging
access, although they must either have funds available to use these services or
the person/agency on the other end must cover the cost. Both of these are
considered “privileges” that could be temporarily or even indefinitely
suspended for disciplinary reasons. Typically these suspensions last 30 days or
less. Indefinite suspensions are much less common, occurring for less than one
percent of MDOC prisoners.
As of March 2022, outgoing calls cost the prisoner $0.14 per
minute. Prisoners cannot receive incoming calls.
Electronic messaging (similar to email) is possible through JPay. MDOC prisons have JPay kiosks. All JPay
messages are read by MDOC staff, and messages cost $0.25 per page of message,
with additional costs associated with attachments. There are options to buy
bulk quantities of JPay “stamps” to reduce the cost to $0.20 per page of
message. JPay will only accept certain types of attachments, including JPEG
image files but excluding PDFs. The JPay messaging service does not provide a
sender any confirmation that the prisoner received or opened the message,
although the sender would be notified before sending if the prisoner did not
have access (such as when privileges are suspended).
Importantly, JPay is different from regular email services.
If an incarcerated payer or recipient has an email address on file, he or she
will not be able to access that account
during incarceration. Child support professionals should not expect regular
email to reach an incarcerated parent.
Additional Information
For more detail on mail incoming to an MDOC facility and its
handling, please reference the MDOC policy: MDOC
Policy Directive 05.03.118 Prisoner Mail. For any clarification of other
material or future items to be covered, please contact me at LindholmA@courts.mi.gov. Stay tuned
for announcement of a Thursday webinar on a similar topic featuring MDOC staff,
co-hosted by the Friend of the Court Bureau and the Michigan Judicial
Institute.
Links:
Amy Lindholm holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from
Kalamazoo College and a Master’s degree in Public Administration from Grand
Valley State University. She came to the
State Court Administrative Office’s Friend of the Court Bureau in 2017 after managing a
small international development nonprofit agency and previously working in a
friend of the court office for five years.
