Beginning in 2018 and accelerating sharply in 2023-24, the federal Bureau of Prisons and a growing list of state DOCs have moved to digital-only mail intake: family members' physical letters and children's drawings are mailed to a contracted scanning company, photocopied at low resolution, often delivered to the prisoner weeks or months later, and the originals destroyed without return.

Mailroom contraband has not declined. Suicide rates inside CMUs and other restrictive units, where contact with the outside is most severed, are documented to be among the highest in the federal system.

We ask the Director of the BOP and every state DOC to restore direct physical mail intake.