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Prison mail screening not going as planned

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published October 4, 2006

WASHINGTON - Mail for convicted terrorists and other dangerous federal inmates isn't being fully read by prison authorities, and that is a risk to national security, a Justice Department review concluded Tuesday.

The U.S. Bureau of Prisons is supposed to translate and screen all mail to and from the highest-risk inmates - including terrorists, gang members and spies - for evidence of criminal activity. But that target was not being met consistently at 10 federal prisons and detention centers surveyed by the Justice Department's inspector general.

"The threat remains that terrorist and other high-risk inmates can use mail and verbal communications to conduct terrorist or criminal activities while incarcerated," concluded the report by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine. It urged the Bureau of Prisons to correct quickly the security gap, including putting tracking systems in place to ensure all high-risk inmate mail is read and analyzed.

A Bureau of Prisons spokesman said the agency agrees with the review's recommendations in whole or in part. But it is too cash-strapped to afford enough staff to sort through the thousands of letters and other pieces of mail federal prisons receive each week.

Experts fear that a new generation of homegrown terrorists is being bred in prison and that, after release, they will seek guidance from Islamic extremists still behind bars.

The Justice Department's mail investigation was spurred, in part, after three terrorists at a federal prison in Florence, Colo., were found to have written an estimated 90 letters from 2002 to 2004 to Islamic extremists - some with links to the March 11, 2004, attacks on commuter trains in Madrid. The attacks killed 191 people and wounded more than 1,700.

[Last modified October 4, 2006, 00:59:29]