HARRISBURG — Family members frustrated by what they described as Pennsylvania’s inhumane treatment of prisoners and their relatives took their protest to the Capitol Rotunda on Thursday.

In August, the Department of Corrections locked down the state’s 25 facilities after dozens of staff members reported being sickened by exposure to synthetic narcotics. The lockdown ended after 12 days but new restrictions on visitation and mail delivery for inmates remain in place.

“Your loved one can’t receive a card, a photo of his baby, of his child,” said Patricia Vickers, who traveled from Philadelphia to protest at Thursday’s tree-lighting ceremony. “They get the card printed out on a piece of paper. They don’t get to feel the card. They can’t touch it. It takes away the whole meaning of Christmas and the love you put into that letter.”

Since the lockdown, the department spent $15 million on more stringent security measures, including body scanners for visitors, and hired a Florida-based company to scan incoming mail and pass along photocopies to prisoners. It also removed vending machines from prison waiting rooms, where families often spend hours waiting to see inmates.

“It’s cruel,” Vickers said. “It’s just cruel. They don’t care if you’ve got diabetes or you’ve got little kids with you.”

Capitol Police escorted Vickers and about a dozen other protesters from the tree-lighting ceremony after they unfurled a sign and thanted that Gov. Tom Wolf treated them like the Grinch. No one was arrested although, as per Capitol Police policy, they were banned from the building for the rest of the day.

Wolf, apparently caught off guard by the protest, plowed ahead with his prepared remarks. Afterward, he said his office will continue to work with inmate advocacy groups.

“We obviously have a safety problem that affects the prisoners and the staff, and we want to do something about that to keep everybody safe, and I think we’re trying to do it the right way,” the governor said.

Pennsylvania’s treatment of inmates has drawn a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union and scrutiny from various civil and human rights organizations. The lawsuit, which will go before a judge next month, specifically concerns the department’s new policy of opening legal mail in front of the inmate, providing the inmate with a photocopy and holding the original for 45 days before destroying it.

“This new system dramatically expands the opportunities for deliberate or inadvertent breach of confidentiality,” said Witold Walczak, legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania. “Attorney-client confidentiality is zealously guarded because it’s essential for lawyers to be able to have candid conversations with their clients.”

It’s a basic civil right all inmates are entitled to, he said, and can prove absolutely essential in situations where a prisoner is suing over conditions of captivity or treatment by facility staff.

“If a guard goes to photocopy it and he sees his name on there, you don’t think he’s going to look at it?” Walczak said. “Then, when it’s stored for 45 days, there’s no way for prisoners to be sure the Department of Corrections isn’t going to look at it.”

The processing of other mail not relating to legal matters, such as Christmas cards, has also proven problematic. Pennsylvania currently ships all that mail to the Seminole, Fla.-based Smart Communications, where it is processed, photocopied and mailed back to the inmate.

Claire Shubik-Richards, executive director of the Pennsylvania Prison Society, said her group receives dozens of complaints each month about mail processing.

“It may take several weeks for a letter from someone in Philly on the outside writing to someone just outside of Philly on the inside,” she said.

For a while, Shubik-Richards said the advocacy group’s own non-legal mail to inmates was being returned because Smart Communications erroneously marked it as legal mail because of its letterhead. Personal letters were also returned to sender without being processed because they were falsely marked as legal mail. In September, participants in a correspondence class had half of their assignments cut off because Smart Communications wasn’t able to photocopy legal-sized paper.

The removal of vending machines from the prison waiting rooms is also troubling, she said, because visiting an inmate may take between three and five hours. And visitors aren’t allowed to bring food with them or leave to get food and return. The department, she said, initially claimed the situation was temporary but it has continued for more than three months.

“These policies, and particularly this visiting policy, have further strained very strained family ties,” she said. “That’s absolutely counter to the goals of public safety and rehabilitation.”

Between October 2017 and October 2018, Shubik-Richards said her organization saw 28 percent fewer users of its busing service for families visiting inmates. Many riders pointed to the difficulty they have with the new policies, she said.

“Countless research studies have shown the importance of family connection for the ability of someone to reenter the community successfully,” she said. “It is really, really hard to stay connected to someone behind bars and these policies make it more difficult.”

Department spokeswoman Amy Worden said, in a written statement, that mail was the “number one path of contraband into facilities.” That necessitated hiring Smart Communications to process inmate mail off-site.

“We are now working on a 24-hour turnaround from the time the mail reaches Florida to the institution,” she said. “It can take several days for mail to reach Florida from [Pennsylvania].”

As for the vending machines, she said the department halted their use because visitors are the second leading route for smuggling drugs into the prison. The machines are expected to be returned once body scanners are installed, although a firm timeline for that to happen was not available Thursday.

“Visitors with medical needs may make arrangements with the individual prison to have access to food,” Worden said.

Capitol police escort protesters from the Rotunda during the tree lighting ceremony. Dan Gleiter | dgleiter@pennlive.comPENNLIVE.COM

Since the crackdown, the department reported in decreases in both drugs found at the facilities and reported drug exposures.

According to state data, 48 staff members were sent to the emergency room for possible drug exposures this August. That fell to eight in September. The amount of drugs found inside state prisons also fell 46 percent to the lowest level in more than a year.

But families and advocates question whether the changes were truly necessary and if they ultimately do more harm than good.

“I have got to believe, and I do believe, there are more targeted responses to this problem,” Shubik-Richards said.

Lorraine Haw, who also traveled to Harrisburg from Philadelphia to protest the changes, said she just wants to send her son a Christmas card that he can hold in his hands, that he can open and feel some connection to the outside world.

“As a mother, I cry over my mail,” she said. “I kiss my mail so my baby can feel and smell his mother. A photocopy can’t do that.”

Staff writer Charles Thompson contributed to this report.

Wallace McKelvey may be reached at wmckelvey@pennlive.com. Follow him on Twitter @wjmckelvey. Find PennLive on Facebook.

Read the ‘TAPPED OUT’ special investigation of drinking water.