A recent episode of 40 Minutes With 40 offers a frank conversation about addiction inside the Virginia Department of Corrections. Founder “Free” speaks with an incarcerated guest known as “Black” about the drugs circulating in prison, why people use them, and why punishment alone does so little to stop the crisis.

When Free asks what contributes most to drug use inside, Black’s answer is immediate:

“Lack of programming.”

He explains:

“We’re in a box, all day long.”

That simple statement captures something often missing from public conversations about prison drug use. People are confined for years — sometimes decades — with too little meaningful activity, inadequate mental-health care, few opportunities to grow, and no real escape from the noise, violence, grief and hopelessness around them.

As Black also reminds listeners:

“We got a bunch of good guys in here.”

People struggling with addiction are not disposable. They are not beyond help. And they are not made healthier by having every remaining source of hope taken from them.

Drugs have not disappeared with physical mail

Many prison systems have restricted or eliminated physical personal mail, replacing original letters with scanned copies or digital messages. These changes are frequently justified as efforts to stop contraband.

Yet people incarcerated in multiple states have told us that the availability of drugs has not declined — and in fact the crisis appears to have grown worse.

One of our contacts in a Florida prison described officers walking past people experiencing apparent overdoses. Kurtis, who is incarcerated in Illinois, has told us that there are sometimes as many as five deaths in a single week where he is, related to drugs.

These personal accounts do not establish exactly how every substance enters every prison. They do, however, challenge the idea that ordinary family letters are the primary cause of the drug crisis. When physical mail disappears but drugs remain plentiful, prisons must look honestly at other points of entry rather than continuing to burden families and sever meaningful connections.

Mail restrictions also carry a painful cost. A handwritten letter is often one of the few tangible reminders a person has that someone outside still sees, remembers and loves them. Removing that connection can deepen the very isolation and despair that make substance use more appealing.

Punishment is not treatment

The conversation also examines the correctional system’s most common response to drug use: punishment.

A person caught using drugs may receive a disciplinary charge, lose earned good time, be placed in segregation, lose privileges and face even more idle time. None of those consequences treats addiction. In many cases, they create additional hopelessness — and another reason to seek temporary relief from unbearable surroundings.

Black suggests beginning with these four words:

“Do you need help?”

Instead of immediately demanding identification and writing a charge that takes away a person’s good time, he proposes offering treatment first: access to a drug program, weekly counseling and meaningful mental-health support.

He suggests suspending the disciplinary consequence for six months while the person participates in treatment. Give them an opportunity to recover. If they refuse the help or continue using after that period, consequences may follow — but treatment and accountability should begin with a genuine chance to get well.

As Black explains, a person in active addiction is not thinking clearly. Simply punishing the behavior without treating what drives it sends that person directly back into the same circumstances, now with even less hope than before.

A better first response

Addiction does not stop being a health issue when the person suffering from it is incarcerated.

Prisons cannot punish people into recovery. They cannot eliminate addiction through isolation, deprivation and the removal of family contact. And they cannot credibly claim to value rehabilitation while leaving people confined in idleness and then disciplining them for the ways they attempt to escape it.

The first response does not have to be another charge.

It could be a question:

Do you need help?

Listen to the full conversation from 40 Minutes With 40 below, and subscribe to their channel to support more discussions led by people with direct experience of life inside prison.