LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — The Nevada Department of Corrections has been dealing with more and more drugs making it inside the prison system.
Over the last two years, they've looked at several proposals that could help curb that problem: drug-detecting dogs and changing prison mail policies from allowing physical mail inside facilities to inmates receiving digitized copies of their mail.
Now, advocates are questioning whether that policy should be changed at all.
The NDOC ran a Mail Interdiction Study from Feb. 5, 2025, to Oct. 31, 2025, at High Desert State Prison. The main purpose of the study was to detect the prevalence of K2, spice and other synthetic opioids coming to Nevada prisons through physical mail.
"The ink is laced. The envelope is laced," Dshamba Prater, union secretary and retired NDOC employee, told state lawmakers in February. "There's a number of ways that they're getting [drugs] in."
Prison officials have also blamed the rising number of inmate deaths and more violence behind bars on drug-related debt.
NDOC officials purchased a RaySecur MailSecur scanner with opioid settlement funds from the Department of Human Services. At the end of the nine months, NDOC officials recommended digitizing all non-legal offender mail across the Nevada prison system and proposed an emergency revision to Administrative Regulation 750 (AR 750) to mandate the change.
Before officials enact legislation that would limit incarcerated individuals from receiving physical mail, the NDOC has to publicly release any published study or evidence regarding their findings before changes can be made, per state law.
Representatives from Return Strong, a group that advocates for Nevada inmates and their families, and the Fines and Fees Justice Center, a group that works to eliminate unjust fees, told Channel 13 the study was originally posted on the NDOC website but when they began pushing back against the physical mail policy, it was taken down.
Sources have provided a copy of that study to Channel 13, which you can read below.
Those two groups submitted new documents to state lawmakers saying the issue needs to be studied more closely before any policy decisions are made.
Two issues they brought up were that the study ended early and not enough data was collected in order to create a policy across the whole system.
The study was only done at High Desert State Prison. According to Return Strong, only 20% of all incoming USPS mail was processed due to volume. That breaks down to: of the 400 to 600 pieces of mail that the facility receives per day, the scanner only processed about 65 to 130 pieces of mail per day. That equates to only about 20% of USPS mail entering the facility being scanned.
"The study's core extrapolation — that 1,275 contaminated pieces would have been detected if 100% of mail were scanned — is a projection, not an observed measurement," their documents read in part. "The actual detection rate within the 20% scanned cannot be assumed to be representative without statistical validation."
They also questioned how prison staff selected what mail would be scanned, whether staff identified the specific offenders that were receiving contaminated mail and cross-reference mail interceptions with subsequent overdose events.
"Without this data linkage, the study cannot demonstrate that the intercepted mail caused any specific overdose or harm," the documents read in part. "The correlation between rising overdoses and contaminated mail is asserted, not proven."
Advocates also questioned whether NDOC staff compared the drugs making it into prisons through mail versus other ways the drugs are getting in. For example, through in-person visitors or drones.
You can read the entire document below.
Similar concerns were previously raised by Paul Lunkwitz, president of the local union and vice president of the state union.
"What we know from experience is that every time one avenue for introducing contraband gets choked off, another is open. Michigan DOC put a hard break on their inmate mail, which prevented physical mail with substances from being delivered to inmates," Lunkwitz previously said. "What happened? Legal mail quadrupled. The NDOC changed clear containers for food. So people started putting contraband inside the food. In Ireland, they put a net over the prison so that drones couldn't drop contraband on the yard. So they dropped fireballs to burn holes in the net and then drop the contraband through the holes. There will always be a need to search for contraband inside prisons."
Channel 13 reached out to NDOC officials to see if they had any additional information or would like to comment on the matter. As of the time this article was published, we have not heard back.
This is not the first time NDOC officials have tried to limit physical mail being allowed inside Nevada prisons.
Back in 2022, former prison director Charles Daniels cited more contraband entering prisons as a reason to prohibit certain mail. The measure was not approved by the Board of Prison Commissioners.
It also led to Assembly Bill 121 being passed and signed into law in 2023. That law requires prisons to provide inmates with physical and original copies of their mail.