As Pennsylvania’s state prisons work to modify a policy concerning screening of legal mail to prisoners, Butler County Prison administrators are getting ready to introduce a new safeguard for their inmates personal mail.
Currently, all inmate personal mail is photocopied, according to Warden Joe DeMore.
“We give inmates a photocopy of the mail, and then we destroy the originals,” DeMore said in an interview Wednesday.
He says the Butler County Prison has never confiscated legal mail as state prisons had been doing for the past six months in order to prevent drug smuggling. Now, as part of a legal settlement, state prisons will rescind their policy that lawyers said made it impossible for them to communicate confidentially with their clients.
The procedure for personal mail in the Butler County Prison will change next month when electronic tablets are in place. All inmates’ personal mail will be shipped to Texas, where it will be screened and copied. Prisoners will then view the mail on an electronic tablet.
DeMore says there no date set on when this new system will be in place.
Butler County Prison employees currently doing the job of photocopying inmate personal mail wear masks and gloves, but DeMore says no incidents have recently occurred.
Last August, six Butler County prison workers were sickened after coming into contact with synthetic marijuana during a search of an inmate’s cell.
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