39¢/Message. Unregulated. Filtered.

That's the current state of our prison e-messaging service, an alternative to writing a physical letter in 2026.

Please don't presume I do not like writing letters -- I do -- but in this global age, it is easier to send a message from my tablet to my friends, and despite the cost mentioned in the opening subject, cheaper than the physical letter.

To mail one letter to my US-based friend, it's a 78¢ "Forever" stamp (with rumblings of distant thunder suggesting a want of a price hike to 95¢ by the USPS), a 19¢ #10 envelope, plus my costs for up to six sheets of paper and the occasional 45¢ blue BIC pen. My letter then goes into a mailbox, and may eventually leave the compound, get to a mail sort center in Pensacola, Floriderp, and head off to wherever it is going.
Sometimes, the letter gets stuck in Pensacola... for months.

I haven't physically mailed my Canadian friend in a while, but it'll require two of those Forever stamps.

Imagine mailing across the pond from Prison, y'all. I ought to do it just once, just so I can tell you all how long it takes and what level of hell I went through just to send that letter!
But imagine the headache and cost my fellow residents go through to mail a letter back home when America is not theirs.

That brings us back to 39¢ a message, 6000 characters for us, and you cannot use an ampersand (&) -- the parser changes them all to " and " (yes, spaces included).

I'm basically paying to send truncated e-mail.

RFC 822 and RFC 2822 all lay out the rules and standards in which e-mail becomes e-mail. Securus, ViaPath, and other corrections messaging providers then butcher and bodge together leftover parts to make what they want out of it, sell corrections on a money making proposition ("look what we can do to a penny!"), blow a little magic "this will help you stop drugs from coming in by mail" smoke up everyone's backsides, and wiggle their fingers.
_cash!

The best part is, the FCC cannot regulate what we are charged for these messages, so every time I want to blog, it is 39¢.
I want to check up on a friend who recently shared a health diagnosis with me? 39¢.
I need to ask a question about some thing in science or health or tech I don't understand and need someone to look it up for me? 39¢.
I worry about a friend who has not said much in a month, three months, six months? 39¢, 39¢, 39¢.

And yet e-mail is, largely, free.

On that side of the fences, one can typically sign up for a free e-mail address through a number of providers who typically shovel ads down their throat or sell their information to the highest bidder. For a nominal fee, one can pay for e-mail hosting and a domain name, giving themselves a more professional appearance than xYx_fl00fysk8rdood_yXy@geeitsanotherfree.email on applications and resumes. By nominal, I do mean less than $50 per year for domain and mail hosting combined.

So if in the free world, I can pay less than $50 a year for all the e-mail I can reasonably send and receive from multiple domain names and e-mail addresses, why do I only get a maximum of 128 outgoing messages for the same cost in prison, AND why must people who wish to correspond with me also spend 39¢ a pop and submit to an absurd level of scrutiny just to say "Hey, the folks you used to chat with all wish you a happy cakeday. We all miss you."

Oh, that's right.

In the name of insecurity.

You're welcome, profit centers.