Utah’s prisons had a mail contraband problem. Pigeonly, a Nevada-based company that specializes in inmate communications, said they could fix it.
Starting in January, instead of sending a letter directly to an inmate at one of Utah’s two prisons, a person would instead need to mail it to Pigeonly’s processing facility in Las Vegas.
A Pigeonly staffer would then scan it, perform a cursory review for issues (like staples or other disqualifying items), and pass it virtually to a Corrections Department staffer in Utah for review.
Next, Pigeonly would print copies of approved mail and send it to the prison — replicating card stock for greeting cards, and photo paper for pictures — where staff then delivered those reproductions to inmates.
Pigeonly, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protections in January 2024, promised to do its part “within a timely manner,” according to select terms of the contract that the Utah Department of Corrections shared with The Salt Lake Tribune. In turn, Corrections agreed to give them as much as $1.7 million — about $350,000 per fiscal year — over the next five years.
But problems began soon after the policy was implemented on Jan. 6. Loved ones of inmates told The Tribune that their letters were taking weeks to arrive, if their loved ones got them at all. The quality of reproduction was sometimes poor. Some found that letters they once had no trouble sending were now being rejected and returned. Others said they had stopped sending letters altogether.
By mid-February, Corrections held listening sessions with loved ones of inmates and shared a survey to collect more experiences. The department posted an update on its website, saying it was aware of “issues with delayed delivery, quality, and concerns about the vendor’s business practices.”
The posted survey results show that of the 119 responses, 42 indicated mail was taking longer than three weeks to be delivered, and 23 said mail was taking longer than two weeks.
Audrie Ercanbrack told The Tribune that the holdup has been hard for her loved one, especially during his earlier days, when he was in the prison’s receiving and orientation process.
“I got several letters from him … and he’s saying, like, ‘Hey, I know you’re busy,’ and I had already sent four letters — five letters — at that point,” Ercanbrack said. They just hadn’t arrived yet.
“He’s just kind of feeling forgotten about,” she said.
(Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Utah State Correctional Facility in Salt Lake City on Friday, Sept. 6, 2024.
Corrections told families in the February post that officials “understand the impact that a disruption of mail can have on the incarcerated population, and the frustration felt by loved ones and others.”
“As with any large-scale operational change, it takes time to adapt to new processes,” the post read. “We appreciate the input we’ve received from the public to help us understand and address the issues as quickly as possible.”
Pigeonly CEO and co-founder Frederick Hutson acknowledged to The Tribune that “there was a slowdown” in the first four weeks of its agreement with Utah, but he said those issues have since been fixed. He believes the more recently reported issues are more a matter of “perception” than reality.
“So that first four weeks, there absolutely was a percentage of parcels that were delayed, but it wasn’t the majority. But I also understand how this works,” he said. “When you shift to something new, any issues and mistakes [are] amplified, and the assumption is that they all have that same issue, which just isn’t the case.”
The company, he said, tracks every piece of mail it receives from the time it arrives to the time the reproductions are mailed back out. He said most mail was processed and sent to Utah’s prisons in 24 hours, but a small portion during the first month of service took four days.
“So, I just think there was just a lot of perception, and maybe even failure to set the correct expectations to people, that just created an idea that things were way more worse than what they actually were,” he said.
Corrections Deputy Executive Director Spencer Turley said in a written statement that officials are “still working through the concerns.” He declined to give additional comments about the deal with Pigeonly or plans moving forward, but said the department was addressing “challenges” with the vendor.
In the meantime, Ercanbrack and others want more reliable communication with their loved ones.
“I understand the purpose of it, which is to limit the amount of contraband that can come in, but,” Ercanbrack said, “all of us are paying the price for something that few people did.”
‘They need to have communication’
Since January, Andrea Buist has had trouble getting letters to her husband. Buist was also formerly an inmate, but she has been out of prison for nearly a year and is expected to finish parole soon. Still, her letters keep getting rejected and returned as “inmate-to-inmate” mail, she said.
That includes her Valentine’s Day card, where she had taken the time to underline each word. Another letter, which she emblazoned with a lipsticked kiss. And a third letter she tried to send after that, where she again left a kiss, but this time colored over it with marker, in case the lipstick was the issue.
For loved ones like Buist, letters are a cheaper way to communicate than phone calls, which cost 10 cents a minute. They also are tangible, and can be reread later, while a phone call can feel fleeting.
“They need to have communication,” she said, “and if they don’t, it’s hard for them. … It makes their time even harder without it.”
Molly Prince, director of the Utah Prisoner Advocate Network, said that it seems Corrections is “taking our concerns seriously” and trying to address the issue.
What’s next?
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) A sergeant walks the fence line at the Utah State Correctional Facility on Friday, Dec. 15, 2023.
Hutson said that since January, Pigeonly has “scale[d] up staffing to be able to handle the influx of mail,” and that doing so resolved its early delays in getting mail processed.
But, he said, fixing that system doesn’t speed up mail delivery for letters en route to them — or from them to prison mail rooms. He said people have the assumption that “once you drop something in a mailbox, that it’s going to be delivered to the destination in three days, or even five days.”
“It’s just not the case,” Hutson said.
Turley, with Corrections, declined to comment further on what, if any, action the department may take in response to the concerns its received.
Information provided to the Utah Prisoner Advocate Network indicates the department will launch a pilot program this month, allowing loved ones to send messages and photos to inmates electronically, through a tablet-based system.
If Corrections does decide to end its deal with Pigeonly, the contract says the state does not have to pay out the full $1.7 million; the contract can be ended “for convenience” 30 days after giving written notice to the contractor.
While Corrections was unable to share data about the impact of the new mail system on contraband, Turley did say it appears to have “cut down” on illegal items getting into the prison through the mail.
