I had a friend who was in prison. They charge for everything electric in one way or another. For example. You can send them an email. But you have to pay to send it. And you had to pay for them to have a device and it's batteries for them to read it.

I wasn't going to do that. So I wrote letters and kept them "interesting." My personal favorite was aging paper using tea. Using a feather quill pen. Writing in a mixture of home made ink using black walnut husks, coffee, and some acrylic paint as a binder.

He said they go through all the letters. The one I sent confused the shit out of the guards. And, they asked me not to do it again. But he said it was one of his favorite things he got in prison and the whole wing new about it. Nothing illegal. Just strange. We played D&D together.

Nothing raises morale like a letter. He's out and doing well. He still mentions the letter a fair bit.

What an awful policy. She is right, the majority of contraband comes from staff. Prison reform now!

Yes, let’s do everything we can to dehumanize inmates while they are incarcerated. I’m sure that will make it so much easier for them when they are eventually released and return to normal society. /s

Because we seem to value punishment over rehabilitation or even justice, most people in Texas will be very happy to hear about this change. They see prisoners more like animals than human. For example, most Texas prisons don’t have air conditioning. Imagine being in a room at 100+ degrees and high humidity with no fan. How long until you snap?

I feel like minimally to completely uninterrupted postal service should be a right regardless of prisoner status, unless you abuse it by bringing in contraband or like recruiting new cult followers through the mail which is highly unlikely to happen as pointed out in the article, most of that happens through guards.

And that’s the problem with the states. Prison should be about rehabilitation but instead we treat prisoners like animals. Hell, some animals are treated better then prisoners.

Taking away mail from prisoners is a terrible thing to do as I’m sure some are looking forward to hearing from their loved ones.

Books are now often contraband in Southern prisons.

Indeed. Just give them a touch screen with an email app. Problem solved.