Mail and Photos at Rikers Island

Building the Address

The department publishes what must appear rather than a sample, so here is the sequence it asks for, assembled:

[Full Legal Name, Book and Case Number]
[The specific jail]
[That jail's Hazen Street address]
East Elmhurst, NY 11370

The three required elements, in the department’s own words, are the person’s full name, their Book and Case number, and the full name and address of the facility where they are housed.

The six addresses:

Jail	Address
Eric M. Taylor Center	10-10 Hazen Street
George R. Vierno Center	09-09 Hazen Street
Otis Bantum Correctional Center	16-00 Hazen Street
Robert N. Davoren Center	11-11 Hazen Street
Rose M. Singer Center	19-19 Hazen Street
West Facility	16-06 Hazen Street

Look them up before you write. The department publishes no notification when someone moves between buildings, and a letter to the wrong jail has to be forwarded.

Nothing Is Scanned Here

Worth saying plainly, because it is becoming rare.

No official New York City Department of Correction source describes scanning, photocopying or digitising personal mail, and no third-party mail vendor is named anywhere in its published rules. In a growing number of systems your letter is opened in another state by a contractor and delivered as an image on a tablet. That is not what happens here.

The handbook describes the opposite: mail may not be opened or read outside the person’s presence unless a lawful search warrant allows it, though the department may inspect, feel and bend an envelope without opening it.

So a card is a card and a drawing is a drawing when it arrives. That changes what is worth sending.

Photographs, and the Rule Everyone Misses

The specifics here are unusually precise:

• Fifteen photographs maximum.
• No larger than 4 by 6 inches.
• No Polaroids or other instant film.
• No pictures of the person in custody themselves, or of anyone else in custody.

That last one is the one families fall foul of. A photo of your person taken before they came in, sent to them as a keepsake, is not permitted.

There is also a display rule worth knowing: photographs may be put on desk tops but not stuck up with toothpaste, and nude photographs may not be displayed where passers-by can see them. Printed material other than legal papers is capped at about one cubic foot in total.

What Cannot Come in a Package

Packages are where most rejections happen, and the prohibitions are not intuitive.

Prohibited outright:

• Toiletries and food. The department’s position is that these must be bought from commissary.
• Anything the department already issues: underwear, socks, towels, bedding, soap, a toothbrush and similar.
• Vitamins, pills, drugs or medication of any kind.
• Can-type containers with metal parts, metal, ceramic or glass containers, aerosols, trigger-type apparatus, pinhole squeezable containers.
• Food and baking ingredients.
• Anything sent C.O.D.

Size and weight: 15 pounds maximum, under 24 inches wide by 12 high by 24 deep.

Clothing has its own list, and it is strict: no pockets, no hoods, no belts, no logos, no strings, no metal, no buttons.

Cash by post is no longer accepted, only money orders and cashier’s cheques.

Packages are delivered no later than 48 hours after receipt. If the person has transferred, the package is time-stamped and forwarded. If they have been released, it is refused or returned.

If Something Is Rejected

New York City does something unusual here: the person in custody chooses what happens next.

If contraband is found, the department tells them what it was and does not give it to them, and if the item is not dangerous or illegal they decide whether to have it destroyed, stored with their secured personal property, donated to an outside charity, or returned to the sender at their own cost.

Notification of any removal comes within 24 hours. Appeals go through the Office of Constituent and Grievance Services or the Board of Correction.

That “at their own cost” clause is worth knowing. Returning a rejected item is charged to the person you sent it to.

Free Stationery, Which Nobody Mentions

The handbook provides free writing paper, envelopes and first-class stamps for all letters to attorneys, courts and public officials, plus supplies for two additional letters each week.

If money arrives in their account within seven days, the cost is deducted afterwards. A person with nothing in their account can still write to you twice a week.

Posting From a Phone, Once You Know the Building

You can write and send from your phone through Pigeonly, uploading a letter or photographs that are printed and posted to the jail under its own mail rules. No envelope, no printer, no stamp.

The practical case for it here is the address problem. Six buildings, six addresses, no notification when somebody moves, and a letter to the wrong one gets forwarded rather than delivered. Sending from your phone at the moment you have checked the lookup, rather than days later when you finally find an envelope, is how that mistake gets avoided.

What the Department Leaves Unstated

• A worked example of the mailing address. The department gives the required elements only.
• How long mail takes from arrival to delivery, other than the 48-hour rule for packages.
• Any photograph rules for televisits, separate from the package photo rules above.
• A dedicated legal mail procedure. The handbook covers privileged telephone calls in detail but has no legal mail section.

Six Checks Before the Envelope Goes

1. Check the lookup and confirm which of the six jails.
2. Full name and Book and Case number on the envelope.
3. Count the photos, stop at fifteen, and none of anyone in custody.
4. Keep toiletries, food and cash out of it entirely.
5. If it is a package, weigh it and measure it.