Prisoners Get Snail-Mailed, Pre-Tech Tweets

The Supreme Court has held that prisoners have a constitutional right to receive mail, so as a cost-cutting measure and modeled after a Maricopa (AZ) program that has withstood a federal court challenge, Oregon jails have been transitioning to a postcard-only policy.

Basically, it saves costs because the jailers don't have to spend so much time opening mail, looking for contraband, watching for disallowed communications and removing flaps.

Previously, a spokesperson for one Oregon jail told the Associated Press that they spend about nine hours a day processing mail, which he estimated would be cut in half by the change. And what neither article mentions is that by my back-of-the-envelope computation, the commissaries may stand to make a healthy profit, by selling pre-stamped postcards at 55-cents, a pop.