Education Justice Project hosts a project called RIPPLE Effect, which sends holiday cards and letters inside prison and will be directly impacted by the recent decision to digitize all prison mail in Illinois.  

Illinois Department of Corrections has implemented a policy to scan all incoming mail. Prison authorities claim the move will stop the flow of contraband drugs inside prison. The new policy began on September 30, 2025. Incarcerated people and their loved ones say it will eliminate the personal touch that handwritten cards and letters provide.  

“It saddens my heart,” says Annette Douglas, RIPPLE Effect coordinator, who has several family members in Illinois prisons. “A lot of people, when they receive RIPPLE Effect letters, or any letters from family members, they like to hold those letters. They like to smell those letters. So getting it scanned in and seeing it on the tablets, I just don’t think that that’s fair. It dehumanizes it. It’s just very cold. It takes the warmness out of it.” 

RIPPLE Effect, which stands for “Reaching Inside Prisons with Purpose and Love,” gathers people from the University of Illinois, community members, those formerly incarcerated, and family members with loved ones in prison. We typically meet at a local church. We sit together to hand write messages on cards that we put into envelopes, address, and send to people in Illinois prisons.  

Our next meeting is Friday, November 7, 5:30pm-7:30pm, when we will be sending out Thanksgiving cards. We will meet at Bethel AME Church, 401 E Park St, Champaign, IL. RIPPLE Effect is generously supported by the Urbana-Champaign Quaker Meeting and Bethel AME Church. We ask that people interested in attending fill out an RSVP form.  

For the first time, our cards will be sent to a remote location, scanned, and then uploaded to tablets to be read by those inside on a flat screen. IDOC entered into a new contract last year with the private company, ICSolutions, which provides tablets to almost all of the nearly 30,000 people in IDOC custody. With the tablets, they can make phone calls, listen to music, watch movies, and read books. This all comes with a price and those inside already tell us they can easily spend over a hundred dollars a month using the tablets.  

Annette doesn’t think the mail scanning is a solution to the hopelessness people feel in prison. “It’s not going to help with the drugs and things that are coming in through the mail. Because they are coming in through the front door. It’s not an answer to the problems. It’s just a form of more control.”  

“We’re still going forward” with RIPPLE Effect, Annette says, “because we need to send that sunshine in there to them. They need words of encouragement now more than ever.”  

There are RIPPLE Effect gatherings coming up November 7 and December 5. Please RSVP if you would like to join us.