by Chuck Sharman

In just over seven years, changes in prison mail policies proliferating across the country have severely restricted mail privileges at lockups holding the majority of America’s nearly 1.2 million prisoners. According to research conducted by PLN in January 2026, at least 78% of these prisoners can no longer directly receive physical mail. Instead, it is scanned into a digital file for electronic delivery, or they get a photocopy. Often, the original is then destroyed.

These practices have erected a gauntlet of hurdles for prisoners’ communications to clear before they ever reach them. Many of the problems relate to the quality of what prisoners eventually receive, which can be seriously degraded. Faces of loved ones, for example, could be reduced to shadowy blurs in a photocopy made by harried prison staffers.

Receiving the mail has become harder, too, since it often now makes an extra stop at a processing center, often in another state, creating new delivery delays. In prisons where the mail is delivered digitally, there are still more problems that arise for prisoners when they have trouble accessing an electronic tablet or a kiosk to read it.

It’s hard to overstate what a sea change this represents. As recently as 2017, physical mail was the primary method of communication with friends and family members for those incarcerated in every prison system in the U.S. (PLN is still conducting research on the nation’s 3,000 or so local jails, for reporting in a future issue.) Officials in these prison systems blame mailed contraband drugs as a reason for the switch, but there isn’t much in the way of data to back up their claims. Unions representing guards are among those making the loudest calls for digital mail, until their own members are threatened with scanning—perhaps because prison staff remain one of the main sources of smuggled drugs and other contraband. In Georgia, for example, 428 guards employed by the state Department of Corrections (DOC) were arrested in just a five-year period, and over 80% were accused of smuggling, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Apr. 2024, p.15.]

Even worse, replacing physical mail has led to a wave of profiteering from companies competing for a chunk of budget dollars to scan and digitize it. Some lockups use their own guard staff to photocopy mail onsite for delivery to prisoners, but most of those who now receive scanned mail—almost 600,000 prisoners nationwide—get it from a small group of private vendors who have been enriched by contracts to perform the service.

Using third-party vendors to deliver prisoners copies of their mail also provides prisoners a strong incentive to switch to paid electronic messaging—which in many cases is provided by the same vendor. The need to scan all incoming mail is also cited as a reason for bans on physical books and periodicals, which also pushes prisoners to use paid services for electronic libraries that may not include what they want to read.

At least it can be said that no prisoner has yet been directly charged to photocopy or scan their own mail among the 50 states, D.C. and the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). But why must taxpayers’ foot the bill for the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) to deliver the mail and then pay another expense for these vendors to repeat the process? That question has so far been left unanswered.

Mail Screening vs. Scanning

It’s important to distinguish between screening mail and scanning it. In the former case, officials look through a prisoner’s mail for contraband, including drugs, pornography and money, as well as communications that betray criminal intent, such as violent threats or illegal conspiracies. Confusingly, this process is sometimes referred to as mail “scanning,” when envelopes are passed through a machine scanner to look for evidence of contraband like drugs or drug residue. In other cases, “scanning” refers to use of a photo-scanning machine to make either a printed photocopy of the material for delivery to the prisoner or a digital file to be emailed to them.

What happens to the originals in that case? It depends on the prison system. Some deliver a photocopy as soon as possible; then, after screening the originals, anything that passes inspection is delivered to the prisoner, usually about a month later. Some deliver the photocopy and hold the originals for the prisoner to collect upon release. Many prison systems deliver the photocopy and destroy the originals.

Today, there remain just a few prison systems where this doesn’t happen. Those that still deliver mail as it was sent include only the DOC in D.C. and 14 states: California, Connecticut, Georgia, Hawai’i, Idaho, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Nevada, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Vermont and Washington. In addition, there is no mail scanning performed in BOP’s minimum-security prison camps, which hold about 14.6% of its 139,662 incarcerated prisoners.

Even in these prisons, however, there are limits to what a prisoner can receive via mail. In many cases, that includes a cap on the number of photos. Similar policies limit the number of photocopied pages, newspaper and magazine clippings, as well as other enclosures. A not uncommon rule is one like the Oregon DOC adopted in January 2025, banning the use of “security” envelopes, which are those lined with blue paper to prevent seeing cash or other contents inside. These envelopes could also disguise drugs, the prison system said, sending prisoners’ correspondents on a scramble to find unlined envelopes—which many stores no longer stock.

Another rule found in these systems is like the one that the Nevada DOC adopted in 2022, banning colored markings on envelopes not made by the manufacturer; officials claimed that streaks of crayon or ink from a felt-tip marker provide good places to hide drugs that can be sprayed into the paper, especially opioids. To its enormous credit, Nevada is also the only state whose lawmakers have adopted legislation prohibiting its DOC from denying prisoners physical mail. See: Nv. AB 121 (2023).

Prisoner advocates universally decry the loss of physical mail for depriving prisoners of many benefits. Physical mail can be a visceral connection to home that prisoners cherish in the emotionally sterile environment of prison. And maintaining strong connections to loved ones has been proven incredibly valuable in reducing recidivism.

Yet some of these systems are considering moving to a mail scanning scheme. South Carolina’s DOC began a pilot program scanning and photocopying prisoner mail at two prisons in 2023. The Georgia DOC put out a request for proposals (RFP) from mail-handling vendors in February 2025. The Rhode Island DOC had a mail-scanning system that was interrupted when it failed to protect legal mail from being opened and inspected, drawing a legal challenge. The state chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) won an injunction to suspend the practice in January 2025. See: Am. Civ. Lib. Union of R.I. v. Salisbury, R.I. Super. (Providence Cty.), Case No. PC-2024.

The Connecticut DOC put out its own RFP in February 2025 for 12 mail scanners to use in its prisons. But that effort to scan so-called “general” mail was apparently sidelined in October 2025, when a back-and-forth over scanning prisoners’ legal and other privileged mail reached a dead-end, pausing rollout of body scanning equipment, as well.

Legal and Privileged Mail Caught in Scanning Dragnet

Legal mail and other types of “privileged” mail are being drawn into the scanning dragnet, despite precedent by established case law that affords extra protections which “general” mail doesn’t enjoy. Following the refusal by the Supreme Court of the U.S. (SCOTUS) to rehear a 1988 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, a prisoner’s incoming non-privileged or general mail may be opened outside their presence. See: Martin v. Tyson, 845 F.2d 1451 (5th Cir. 1988), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 863 (1988). Prison officials may also restrict what incoming general mail a prisoner is allowed, provided they have a legitimate penological purpose. See: Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78 (1987). That same rationale also allows them to read the contents. See: Smith v. Boyd, 945 F.2d 1041 (8th Cir. 1991).

None of this is true for legal and privileged mail, however. Outgoing privileged mail typically may not be opened. See: Davidson v. Scully, 694 F.2d 50 (2nd Cir. 1982). Incoming privileged mail may be held by officials only long enough to identify the prisoner addressee, SCOTUS has declared. See: Wolfish v. Levi, 573 F.2d 118 (2nd Cir. 1978), rev’d in part on other grounds sub nom, Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520 (1979). Additionally, it may be opened and screened for contraband, but only so long as the check is performed quickly, without reading the contents, and in the presence of the prisoners to whom the mail is addressed. See: Reneer v. Sewell, 975 F.2d 258 (6th Cir. 1992).

As a result of this jurisprudence, some prison systems open incoming privileged mail in the presence of the prisoner addressee before making a photocopy of the contents for him and destroying the originals. In other systems, a private vendor sells a verifying stamp or QR code to attorneys, allowing their documents to get through the mailroom and into the hands of the prisoner who needs them with minimal inspection. In the former case, guard staffing pressures may delay delivery, potentially threatening the prisoner’s ability to comply with court deadlines; in the latter, it is restraints on an attorney’s time that may slow down delivery.

Against this background, the Connecticut DOC put out its request for mail scanning machine proposals. Six months later, in August 2025, state lawmakers tackling a different problem appropriated $500,000 for four body scanners, which were intended to stem a rising tide of strip searches that had become common. The machines were set to go into service on October 1 at York Correctional Institution and Mason Youth Institution. But then Correction Ombuds DeVaughn Ward saw a social media post from the union representing state prison guards, the American Federation of State and County Municipal Employees (AFSCME), which heralded the new equipment for “address[ing] the growing crisis of drugs entering our state correctional facilities.”

The body scanners were indeed ordered to combat smuggling, but they were not intended for use on prisoner mail. Noting the apparent confusion, Ward sent a letter warning DOC Commissioner Angel Quiros and Gov. Ned Lamont (D) that the gap between lawmakers’ intent for the body-scanners and guards’ expectations “leaves a world of potential misunderstanding and misuse by staff.” Quiros was already facing blowback from guards for suggesting that they should pass through the scanners, too; the AFSCME at one point questioned whether the machines were effective at all. As a result, the DOC put the body-scanner rollout, as well as the mail-scanning RFP, on hold.

Prison Systems Using Guards to Photocopy Mail

Physical mail is still delivered directly in 14 states and D.C., along with BOP minimum-security camps, with both accounting for about 21.7% of all U.S. prisoners are held; another 26.6% are confined in systems that use guard staff to open and photocopy prisoner mail for delivery. That includes the remaining 85.7% of the BOP’s prisoners as well as those in 13 other state systems: Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New York, South Dakota, Utah and Virginia—which was the first state prison system to begin making and delivering copies of prisoner mail in 2017.

A pair of bills currently pending in Congress would add mail-scanning equipment at each of the BOP’s 122 lockups. See: H.R.1046 - Marc Fischer Memorial Act; and S.1295—119th Congress (2025-2026). The Senate bill is named for Marc Fisher, a BOP guard who died in August 2024 after opening a drug-laced letter in the mailroom at the U.S. Penitentiary (USP) in Atwater, California. Both bills were introduced in February 2025, and they remain in the Judiciary Committee of each respective legislative chamber. USP-Atwater prisoner Jamar Jones was indicted for smuggling the drugs that the guard might have been exposed to, along with two non-incarcerated co-conspirators, Stephanie Ferreria and Jerman Rudd. Rudd entered a plea agreement in December 2025, while charges remain pending against Jones and Ferreria.

Widespread media reports at the time of their arrests cited prosecutors’ suspicion that Fischer was killed by exposure to mailed fentanyl. But thanks to the government’s filing in opposition to granting the Defendants bail, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California heard in February 2025 that the letter tested positive not for fentanyl but “two varieties of synthetic narcotic, AB-CHMINACA and MDMB-4en-PINACA, commonly referred to as ‘spice.’” Moreover, the coroner reported the guard “died of natural causes from a heart attack.” The coroner’s report allowed that “the circumstances of death suggest external influences, at least fear in the setting of an apparently criminal act (mailing illicit substances to an inmate)”—for which Fischer retains a place on the list of “Fallen Heroes” posted on the BOP’s website. “However,” the coroner’s report continued, “there is no evidence that [“spice”] entered his blood stream.” See: United States v. Jones, USDC (E.D. Cal.), Case No. 1:24-cr-00209.

In Colorado, the DOC has no system-wide policy, but procedures adopted in 15 of its 19 prisons use guards to make and deliver copies of mail to prisoners. The Maine DOC doesn’t have a system-wide mail scanning policy, either, but guards have been making and delivering photocopies of prisoner general mail at Downeast Correctional Facility in Machiasport since 2023. Mail may not be sent to the prison’s main address but must go instead to an address next door to the Maine State Prison, where it is processed by DOC Staff. Prisoners may receive photos, but letters must be sent on 8-1/2” x 11” white paper using blue or black ink, so that a legible black-and-white photocopy can be made. Color photocopies are made of greeting cards, post cards and hand-drawn pictures. Originals are destroyed within 30 days, unless a prisoner files a grievance. Electronic scans of the material used to print the copies are also destroyed after 30 days.

The DOC has used an address next door to this one since 2021 to collect mail sent to prisoners at Maine Correctional Facility, though it is unclear whether that mail is scanned into copies for prisoners or merely screened for contraband. Mail has also been routed through the same address since 2021 to prisoners at Maine State Prison and Mountain View Correctional Facility; again, it is unclear whether it is screened or scanned. The same distinction was also unclear at Southern Maine Women’s Reentry Center, though the address to which its prisoner mail is diverted matches the one where Downeast mail is processed.

Two prison systems currently using guards to photocopy prisoner mail once had contracts with third-party vendors that have since been canceled. Utah’s DOC began using Las Vegas-based Pigeonly to process and copy prisoner mail in January 2025, only to resume use of guard staff for the task in January 2026. Confusingly, the DOC website still provides a list of items that Pigeonly prohibited, presumably because the same restrictions remain in place. Restricted items include glitter, stickers, staples, and any book or magazine that is “spined.” Photos are banned, but they may be uploaded digitally through one of three approved photo-sharing sites.

The Massachusetts DOC also resumed using guards to make and deliver photocopies of prisoner mail, after canceling its contract for Smart Communications’ “MailGuard” service. Under that scheme, which was begun in 2021, prisoner mail was sent to the company’s processing center in Florida to be scanned into a digital file that was either printed and distributed at the prison, or made available electronically on prisoner tablets or a prison kiosk. Under the new system, adopted under 103 Code of Mass. Regs. 481.000 in November 2022, general prisoner mail is passed through a fluoroscope, a machine also used by physicians, which strings together a continuous series of X-ray images to create a video “peek” inside the items.

Technology Comes for Privileged Mail

The Massachusetts DOC adopted an additional rule in May 2024, requiring senders of legal and privileged mail to obtain an “Attorney Control Number” from the agency, which must be printed on the envelope, or else it is treated like general mail. The Florida DOC did the same in September 2025. Other prisons don’t use guard staff for processing prisoner’s privileged mail, fearing charges of constitutional violations if it is read by the guards. Those systems instead purchase “solutions” offered by private vendors, like the mail-scanning machines that were the subject of the Connecticut DOC’s RFP that is now put on hold.

In December 2025, the New York Department of Corrections and Community Services (DOCCS) began using $4.4 million worth of mail-scanning equipment purchased from Massachusetts-based RaySecur. That allows guards to scan privileged mail for contraband without opening it by running it through terahertz-ray (T-Ray) scanners, which provide a three-dimensional image of the contents. T-Ray scanners, the firm claims, are 10 times more sensitive than airport body scanners. RaySecur sold nine more machines for scanning privileged mail to the Hawai’i DOC in September 2025.

Also in December 2025, the Michigan DOC began using a different type of service to process prisoner legal mail from Maryland-based TextBehind. Called DOCS, the system lets senders—typically attorneys—register through an online portal and add the names of incarcerated mail recipients. Before sending those recipients any privileged mail, the sender must return to the online portal to receive a QR code and affix it to the envelope. That then smooths the way for the envelope through the prison’s mailroom.

But that apparently wasn’t good enough for the DOC, which in January 2026 added an additional layer of inspection. Now the QR-coded envelope is opened in front of the prisoner to whom it is addressed, and guards make a photocopy of the contents for the prisoner to take with them back to their cell. They also get to watch while the original contents are shredded and packaged for “secure” disposal.

Scanning General Mail with Private Vendors

TextBehind is one of a half-dozen firms currently holding contracts to provide mail scanning services to prison systems in the remaining 23 states, which together hold over half of U.S. prisoners. The largest of these firms is prison telecom giant Securus Technologies, whose e-messaging service through its JPay subsidiary stands to gain the most when the quality of copied general mail falls short of prisoners’ expectations.

Like its competitors, Securus/JPay scans prisoner general mail into a digital file that is delivered on its e-messaging platform, where any scanning blur or color distortion looks especially awful compared to the crisp text and sharp images that can be sent directly from a loved one’s phone or computer—for a fee, of course. The firm has held a contract to scan prisoners’ general mail for the DOC in North Dakota since 2021. The next year, it added the prison systems in Missouri and New Mexico. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) became a client in 2023, re-routing mail for all 137,606 of its prisoners to a new company processing center in Dallas. The Oklahoma DOC was added in 2024. Most recently, the DOC in Arkansas and in Arizona signed up for the service in September and December 2025, respectively.

With these agreements, Securus/JPay controls mail delivery for 21.3% of American prisoners. The next-largest vendor is Florida-based Smart Communications, whose MailGuard service processes mail for 11.1% of those held in U.S. lockups. Collected at its Florida processing center, their general mail is scanned into digital files for delivery to the prisons, where guards determine whether any content violates prison policy. Whatever survives that screening is then forwarded to prisoners, using their tablets, a prison kiosk, or a printed copy.

Smart Communications was the pioneer in its field, landing the first contract to process mail for an American prison system in Pennsylvania in 2018. As PLN reported then, the impetus was a 12-day statewide lockdown sparked by an “unprecedented number of inmate and staff exposures to unknown substances”—although toxicology experts told the Philadelphia Inquirer that a “likely diagnosis for the staff illnesses may be ‘mass psychogenic illness’—that is, a sort of contagious hysteria fueled by fears of dangerous exposure.” [See: PLN, Sep. 2019, p.60.]

That same year, Smart Communications pitched its service in a $1.8 million contract proposal to the Virginia DOC. Although the prison system opted to keep using guards to scan incoming prisoner general mail, one detail in the proposal raised eyebrows among privacy advocates: a “Smart Tracker” system that was designed to keep tabs on the non-incarcerated senders of the mail. As Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Aaron Mackey told Vice Magazine at the time, these “wholly innocent individuals who are trying to just communicate with family and loved ones, members of their community and so on, are now going to be caught up in this surveillance,” leaving them to suffer “reduced autonomy, privacy and expression and associational rights.”

The firm also won (and later lost) the contract to provide mail scanning for the Massachusetts DOC. Then, in 2022, Smart Communications secured its biggest prize—the contract to scan incoming mail for all 89,682 prisoners caged by the Florida DOC. Again, prison officials blamed contraband drugs for the need to deprive prisoners of their physical mail. And once again, they offered little evidence to back up the claim; in fact, as PLN also reported, the DOC’s own records showed that contraband introduced through routine mail had accounted for just over 1% of the total seized annually. [See: PLN, Sep. 2022, p.48.]

Smart Communications offers no telecom services to “bundle” in its offerings to prison officials. But it banked on its first-in-the-market position to protect its business plan from being poached by competitors. The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee threw cold water on that in late 2022, however, with a ruling against Smart Communications in a suit the firm filed to protect the patent on its MailGuard service. Rather than enforce the patent, the district court tossed it out, calling what Smart does “patent ineligible,” as PLN reported. [See: PLN, June 2023, p.31.]

That suit had been filed against another competitor which controls 8.5% of the market for prisoner mail scanning: TextBehind. Like Smart Communications, the firm does not provide telecom services. But like all its competitors, it creates a digital file from a prisoner’s incoming mail at its processing center and sends the file electronically to the prison, where guards screen its content before delivering it to the prisoner via tablet, kiosk, or a printed copy.

Beginning in 2021, TextBehind signed contracts with the DOC in Nebraska and in Wisconsin. It added the prison system in West Virginia in 2023 and both the Minnesota DOC and the Montana DOC in 2024. In 2025, the North Carolina Division of Adult Correction (DAC) also signed up, as well as the Tennessee DOC—after TextBehind successfully beat back Smart Communications’ patent-infringement claim in that state in 2022. The legal defeat was apparently enough to help push the company into bankruptcy court in 2024, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, June 2025, p.30.]

Using a similar business plan to Securus/JPay is ViaPath (formerly G*T*L), which took over for its competitor in 2023 to provide telecom and mail scanning services to 45,688 prisoners held by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction. Next in market share is Pigeonly, which processes mail for a total of 25,771 prisoners held in four state prison systems: Delaware, Iowa, New Jersey and Wyoming. Pigeonly also filed for bankruptcy protection in 2024, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, June 2025, p.35.] The sixth firm in the market, ICS Corrections, is contracted by the Alabama DOC to process mail for its 20,485 prisoners.

A Dubious Rationale for an Expensive “Service”

A common complaint from prisoners banned from receiving physical mail is the poor quality of the copies that they receive. Yet in those states where mailroom guards make the copies, there is little incentive for guards to take the time to ensure that good copies are made. When third-party vendors are involved, the incentives turn negative. Instead, there is a big incentive to deliver a degraded scan of a prisoner’s mail—so that he and his loved ones will pay for upgraded digital messaging.

Even if the message arrives intact at a lockup, it is often printed out missing part or all of paragraphs, which either didn’t get scanned or didn’t get into the print queue. The delivery of these printouts is also ridiculously slow—vendors brag about adding “only” two or three days to the typical mail transit through the USPS. Moreover, the quality of what a prisoner receives is often shockingly bad. Conveniently for the vendors, this gives senders every reason to take advantage of extra services that let them pay a fee to upload letters and photos to the processing center via text. That not only improves message quality but likely speeds up delivery, as well, given the extra stop that physical mail must make en route to the prisoner.

Even more outrageous is how patently false the universal excuse for this is, and how many media outlets dutifully regurgitate the word “contraband” every time prison officials cite it as the reason for such draconian measures. Data to back up this claim is rarely offered because there is almost none to be found.

When a wildcat guard strike decimated the staffs of New York state prisons in early 2025, prisoners watched in dismay as guards demanded and won suspension of the Humane Alternatives to Long Term (HALT) Solitary Confinement Act, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Apr. 2025, p.9.] What was not widely reported was that the union representing guards, the Correctional Officers and Police Benevolent Association (COPBA), also successfully pushed the state DOCCS to issue an emergency declaration that stripped protections from prisoners’ legal and privileged mail. As of September 2025, months after the strike ended, privileged mail was still being opened and photocopied by guards for delivery to prisoners, outside of their sight—in clear violation of case-law precedent.

“It has helped [the contraband problem], but if you want to 100 percent stop it, make [mail scan delivery of privileged mail] electronic,” COPBA Central Region Vice-President Bryan Hluska told WCAX in nearby Burlington, Vermont.

Beyond the constitutional violation involved, there’s another problem, as the nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative reported: “[T]here’s no solid evidence to date that mail scanning has this intended effect.” In addition to the evidence from Florida—where mail scanning was implemented despite the fact that less than 2% of seized contraband arrived in the mail—there are dismal results from Missouri’s decision to contract prisoner mail scanning from Securus/JPay in 2022; as PLN reported, the average number of drug overdoses in state lockups didn’t go down afterward but in fact went up, from 34 to almost 39 per month. [See: PLN, Apr. 2023, p.60.] In Pennsylvania, the DOC found that only 0.7% of incoming mail was drug-tainted in 2018, before it hired Smart Communications to scan prisoner mail; a year later, the rate fell only one-tenth of 1%, as PLN also reported. [See: PLN, Feb. 2020, p.40.] In 2024, the Wisconsin DOC reported finding more incidents of drugs on paper than in 2021, the year before the state began paying TextBehind to scan prisoner general mail.

It’s not just prisoners who get burned. Taxpayers are thoroughly fleeced to fund this “service”—one that is merely redundant of what they already pay the USPS to provide. According to Wisconsin Watch, the state DOC pays TextBehind over $1 million annually for its service. In Minnesota, the same firm began collecting $540,000 annually when its contract with the DOC was signed in October 2024, CBS News reported. DOC Commissioner Paul Schell brushed that off as a “wash,” citing savings from not paying guards to photocopy and deliver prisoner general mail. But he provided no data to back up that claim.

Writing about his experience with TextBehind shortly after the North Carolina DAC first signed up for its mail scanning service in 2021, prisoner Phillip Vance Smith cited several steep fees that the firm charged, including $4.95 for a credit-card charge and a 4% service fee added on top of state and local taxes. The service was free to prisoners and their loved ones, but their option to upgrade and pay TextBehind’s $1.29 fee to text rather than send a letter for scanning was heavily influenced by undisclosed policies that resulted in rejections of letters for having too many pages or writing on two sides of the same page. Like all mail the firm receives, these rejected items were discarded, leaving prisoners and their loved ones to guess at the reasons they weren’t delivered. Meanwhile, according to its website, TextBehind was building a searchable database of saved correspondence that state prison officials could freely access for seven years.

Another problem that arises for the 600,000 prisoners receiving their mail from a private scanning vendor is that they are expected to access it on a prison-issued electronic tablet. But what happens when a prisoner’s tablet access gets cut off? Whether it’s been lost, damaged or confiscated for disciplinary reasons, the missing tablet typically means that the prisoner’s incoming general mail must be printed out and delivered by guards—if there is sufficient staff on hand. Given the chronic guard shortages in the American carceral system, this almost always adds further delay to the prisoner’s receipt of mail, which will also likely suffer the degraded quality that afflicts most printouts of scanned material.

If mail scanning doesn’t provide the protection from contraband that prison officials claim, if it deprives prisoners of a vital link to loved ones, if it allows machines to make a determination of guilt when a prisoner is accused of smuggling contraband, if it also subjects nonincarcerated senders to intrusive surveillance, and if it serves to enrich a handful of private prison profiteers, shouldn’t we just stop using it?  

Additional sources: Adirondack Daily Enterprise, BBC News, Bridge Michigan, Correctional News, Decarcerate Now NC, EIN Presswire, Fulton (Mo.) Sun, Governing Magazine, Higher Gov, Honolulu Civil Beat, KTVX, Nevada Current, Nevada Independent, Newsday,PPI, PR Newswire, Pen America, Rhode Island Current,Rhode Island ACLU, SourceNM,U.S. Food & Drug Admin., Vice Magazine, WCAX, WTIC, Wisconsin Watch

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