Prison mail scanning is the system most U.S. correctional agencies now use to handle incoming letters: instead of delivering your envelope to the person inside, the facility (or a private vendor working under contract) opens it, runs the pages through a scanner, and sends the digital images to a tablet or shared kiosk the recipient logs into. The paper original is usually destroyed within a month or two. The change was driven by drug interdiction, because synthetic substances like fentanyl and K2 can be dissolved into liquid and absorbed into ordinary paper, and it has rewritten the practical rules for getting a letter through.
How the Scanning Process Works
A letter sent to someone in a scanning program does not go to the prison. It goes to a centralized processing hub, often in a different state. Staff open the envelope, feed each page through a high-speed scanner, and upload the images to a secure server. The recipient logs in on a tablet or kiosk with a PIN or biometric credential and views scanned images of both the envelope and the contents.
These hubs are typically run by private vendors under contract with a state department of corrections or the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The two biggest operators are TextBehind and Securus, which acquired JPay. Each vendor maintains its own hub addresses, formatting rules, and delivery platforms, so the specifics depend on which facility you are writing to. Inside the federal system, most prisoners currently have incoming mail opened and photocopied by facility staff rather than routed to an outside hub, though legislation has been introduced in Congress to extend digital scanning across all 122 federal prisons.
Digital delivery is faster than the old internal sorting process once the letter reaches the scanner. The extra transit time to an out-of-state hub can cancel that out, and sometimes adds days to total delivery.
Where to Send the Letter
If the facility uses a third-party scanning vendor, do not use the prison’s physical address. Each incarcerated person is assigned a mailing address at the vendor’s processing center that includes the facility name, the recipient’s full legal name, and their institutional identification number. Getting any of those three details wrong is the most common reason mail is rejected or lost, and recovering a letter from a hub’s dead-letter file ranges from difficult to impossible.
Facility mail guidelines are usually posted on the state department of corrections website, and they change more often than most senders expect as vendor contracts turn over. Check the current rules before you send anything.
How to Prepare the Pages
Formatting rules vary by vendor, but a few hold almost everywhere scanning is in use:
- Plain white paper. Writing or printing on one side only.
- No glitter, stickers, crayon, or thick cardstock. These jam scanners and get the envelope rejected.
- No greeting cards with electronic components or three-dimensional attachments.
- Watch the page limit. Some facilities cap pages per envelope and return the whole package at the sender’s expense if you exceed it.
Keep copies of what you send. If something goes missing, proof of what you mailed, when, and to which address makes the grievance process on the inside far easier.
What Happens to the Original
After scanning, originals are typically destroyed. Thirty days is a common holding period, and some systems hold for up to 60 days. A few allow the incarcerated person to file a grievance to delay destruction of a specific item, but only if they know it arrived and act quickly. If a handwritten letter or an original photograph has sentimental value, assume the paper itself is not coming back.
The digital copies, by contrast, can persist for years. Some vendor contracts let correctional officials search and access the scanned-mail database for up to seven years, which turns each letter into a permanent, searchable record rather than something read once and handed over.
Photos, Books, and Publications
Photographs sent with a letter go through the scanner along with the pages. Quality drops noticeably, color varies by system (some scan in grayscale), and many facilities cap how many photos a single mailing can contain. Polaroid-style instant photos are often prohibited because their layered construction can conceal contraband. If photo quality matters, electronic messaging generally produces a better image than physical mail.
Books and periodicals are handled separately from letters and are not run through the correspondence scanner. In the federal system, hardcover publications at every security level, and softcover publications at medium security and above, must be sent directly from a publisher, book club, or bookstore. Low- and minimum-security federal inmates can receive softcovers from any source. “Publisher” is read broadly and includes online retailers. If a title is out of print and unavailable commercially, the unit manager can approve an exception with written documentation.1eCFR. 28 CFR Part 540 Subpart F – Incoming Publications
Legal Mail Is Not Scanned
Attorney correspondence is handled under a different rule and should not be routed through a scanning hub. Under federal regulations, properly marked attorney mail is “special mail” that may only be opened in the inmate’s presence, and staff may not read or copy it. For those protections to apply, the envelope must be clearly marked “Special Mail—Open only in the presence of the inmate,” and the sender’s identity as an attorney must be apparent from the envelope. Missing either requirement, and staff can treat it as general correspondence and open, inspect, and read it without the inmate present.2eCFR. 28 CFR 540.18 – Special Mail The special-mail category also covers correspondence from courts, members of Congress, the Department of Justice (excluding the BOP itself), and certain other government officials.3eCFR. 28 CFR 540.12 – Controls and Procedures
The Supreme Court held in Wolff v. McDonnell that officials may open legal mail in the inmate’s presence to check for physical contraband but may not read its contents.4Justia. Wolff v McDonnell, 418 US 539 (1974) Scanning a legal letter would create a stored copy on a server accessible to facility staff, which is exactly what that rule was meant to prevent. For that reason, most facilities exempt legal mail from scanning entirely. Some require attorneys to register their credentials with the mailroom in advance. If a legal letter is accidentally sent to a scanning hub, the standard response is to return it to the sender unopened. In 2026, bipartisan legislation was reintroduced in Congress to reinforce protections against scanning or digitizing attorney-client correspondence in federal prisons.5Congresswoman Madeleine Dean. Dean, Jeffries, Lee, Bacon Reintroduce Legislation to Protect Private Communication Between Incarcerated People and Their Lawyers
Who Can Read General Mail
Non-privileged mail carries no expectation of privacy from facility staff. Under 28 CFR § 540.12, every institution must inform arriving inmates that staff have authority to open all mail addressed to them before delivery, and general correspondence can be opened, inspected, and read.3eCFR. 28 CFR 540.12 – Controls and Procedures An inmate can refuse to have general correspondence opened, but the mail is then returned to the Postal Service undelivered. State systems operate under their own administrative codes with similar inspection authority. This baseline is what administrators rely on to justify scanning: if staff can already read the letter, taking a digital image of it is treated as a lesser intrusion rather than a new one.
Outgoing mail is almost always still physical paper. Outgoing general correspondence is subject to the same inspection authority, so staff at medium- and higher-security federal facilities can read outgoing letters before mailing them.3eCFR. 28 CFR 540.12 – Controls and Procedures Outgoing special mail can be sealed by the inmate and is not subject to inspection, unless the person has been placed on restricted special-mail status for prior violations.2eCFR. 28 CFR 540.18 – Special Mail
If Mail Is Rejected or Lost
Mail is rejected at scanning hubs for a range of reasons: wrong address, missing identification number, prohibited materials, paper that will not feed through the scanner, or content flagged as a security concern. Whether the sender gets a notice depends on the facility’s policy. Some hubs return rejected mail at the sender’s expense. Others destroy it.
To contest a rejection or loss, the incarcerated person typically has to file an internal grievance through the facility’s administrative remedy process. The Prison Litigation Reform Act bars federal courts from hearing a mail-interference suit until those administrative remedies are exhausted, so the grievance is a prerequisite rather than an option. Deadlines are short, sometimes as little as 14 days from when the person knew or should have known about the problem.
Electronic Messaging as a Faster Option
Many facilities now offer electronic messaging alongside or in place of scanned paper mail. These systems work like a limited email service: you buy digital stamps or message credits through the vendor’s website or app, type the message (character limits apply), and send it to the recipient’s account. Replies come back the same way, with the incarcerated person paying per message or per minute of typing, depending on the vendor.
Costs vary widely. Some state systems offer free messaging; others charge up to $0.50 per message. The national average falls in the $0.25 to $0.35 range. Attaching a photo or short video typically doubles the cost of a message. Character limits run from as few as 500 characters in some systems to 20,000 in others, entirely depending on the vendor contract. Bulk pricing exists in some places but can actually increase the per-message cost for people who cannot afford to buy a large block at once.
What the Recipient Sees
Scanned mail usually stays accessible on the vendor’s server for the length of the person’s incarceration, and most platforms allow saved messages to be organized into folders. Printing is generally available at a per-page fee, which the vendor sets and which adds up quickly. For the person inside, the result is a feed of letters they can revisit, with the physical keepsake gone and the quality capped by the scanner.