Around the holiday season, seeing my name on the prison’s “Package-Room List” always invokes feelings of being loved, familial connectedness and gratitude.
When I saw saltwater taffy in my food package, I knew my mom had visited Virginia Beach, where her parents lived and where I spent most of my summers swimming in my grandparents’ backyard lake. When she sent Junior’s cheesecake, I know she wanted to gently remind me of past joys spending the holiday season in New York City.
Of course, people who receive packages are not limited to the incarcerated population. Youth at summer camp, U.S. service members and folks in the hospital know the special power of a care package sent from home. For prisoners, just like for others, home packages are a hug that some loved ones can’t give in person.
The prison package room’s purpose is to maintain our connectedness to ”home” through mail and articles sent to facilities, which includes cultural foods, quality clothes and nostalgic items, which are hand-selected by loved ones to reinforce that two things can be true: We may be incarcerated, but we are also loved.
Nowadays, however, walking up to the prison’s package room window feels more akin to going into one’s first parole hearing after serving a lengthy sentence.
No one should be on the verge of a panic attack when they retrieve their goodies. But that’s what’s happening throughout New York state correctional facilities since a statewide directive, 4911, went into effect in 2023.
Up until May 8, 2023, the “Package & Articles Sent to Facilities” policy was comprehensive yet fair concerning permissible package room articles sent from home, friends or venders. The behemoth new 25-page directive establishes one of the harshest rules for many incarcerated individuals and their families to digest. It reads:
This directive establishes the policy of the Department concerning the ordering of packaging and articles from a vendor by incarcerated individuals and their families and friends which will be received through the mail into facility Package Rooms.
Only packages received directly from a vendor will be permitted, except for up to two non-food packages per calendar year, which may be provided by the family or friends of an incarcerated individual.
Food packages from home were halted by New York Department of Corrections & Community Supervision (DOCCS) based on the premise that drug contraband was entering through “food packages” sent from home. An April 2022 DOCCS memorandum reads: “As a result of increased violence and overdose due to the introduction of contraband through the packaging room, changes will be implemented, which result in approved vendor food packages, only with the exception of two non-food packages a year” sent from home.
Then in November 2023, before the holidays, Daniel F. Martuscello III, now DOCCS’s commissioner, sent out two memos detailing the dangers of drug use in prison and asserting that “despite the best efforts by staff, the use of these drugs has resulted in the death of incarcerated individuals.”
To date, I have served 22 years, and there have always been incarcerated individuals who struggle with drugs, alcohol, sex, and so forth. This memorandum, which was sent during the heightened stress during the holidays, confirmed what incarcerated individuals already know: Stopping food packaging from home will not ease, interrupt and certainly not stop drugs from entering prison.
During the holidays, incarcerated people come together and share food, hygiene products and laughs. Incarcerated individuals watch out for others who might be feeling forgotten by loved ones.
Further, Martuscello remarks that incarcerated individuals “are encouraged to use all the resources you have available to you to cope with stressful times” (i.e. music, messaging, phone calls, video and a variety of other tablet materials). In other words, “let them eat cake” — just as long as it’s not cake sent in a food package from their homes.
Packages from home connect us to our families and histories, in a way that exploitatively priced catalog and Securus tablet purchases cannot. Yes, saltwater taffy and cheesecake, if allowed, can be bought from an “approved” vendor’s catalog, but they cannot replicate the special feeling of knowing a loved one touched the items received in a home-sent care package.
We’re not backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.
As Donald Trump is inaugurated a second time, independent media organizations are faced with urgent mandates: Tell the truth more loudly than ever before. Do that work even as our standard modes of distribution (such as social media platforms) are being manipulated and curtailed by forces of fascist repression and ruthless capitalism. Do that work even as journalism and journalists face targeted attacks, including from the government itself. And do that work in community, never forgetting that we’re not shouting into a faceless void – we’re reaching out to real people amid a life-threatening political climate.
Our task is formidable, and it requires us to ground ourselves in our principles, remind ourselves of our utility, dig in and commit.
As a dizzying number of corporate news organizations – either through need or greed – rush to implement new ways to further monetize their content, and others acquiesce to Trump’s wishes, now is a time for movement media-makers to double down on community-first models.
At Truthout, we are reaffirming our commitments on this front: We won’t run ads or have a paywall because we believe that everyone should have access to information, and that access should exist without barriers and free of distractions from craven corporate interests. We recognize the implications for democracy when information-seekers click a link only to find the article trapped behind a paywall or buried on a page with dozens of invasive ads. The laws of capitalism dictate an unending increase in monetization, and much of the media simply follows those laws. Truthout and many of our peers are dedicating ourselves to following other paths – a commitment which feels vital in a moment when corporations are evermore overtly embedded in government.
Over 80 percent of Truthout‘s funding comes from small individual donations from our community of readers, and the remaining 20 percent comes from a handful of social justice-oriented foundations. Over a third of our total budget is supported by recurring monthly donors, many of whom give because they want to help us keep Truthout barrier-free for everyone.
You can help by giving today. Whether you can make a small monthly donation or a larger gift, Truthout only works with your support.