Federal Inmates Join the Electronic Age with E-mail

Well as of last month my husband was able to start using e-mail as another form of correspondence.  There is a federal law out there that says that all inmates are supposed to have access to e-mail by April of 2011, so if your loved one does not have it yet, it should be coming soon.  It is ironic that just last week I was reading an article about Generation Y (anyone born after 1995), that most of them think e-mail is old and archaic.  Texting, instant messaging, tweeting, and skype are all much faster and more immediate than even e-mail.  Unless of course you get your e-mail sent to your cell phone or hand held device, then you know right away when those messages arrive.  Lucky us.

The inmates have to stand in line to use a small number of terminals for a large population.  They have also received e-mail accounts for them to move some of their money over to, to pay for the cost of this new service.  The clock starts ticking when they sign on and they are charged per minute they spend reading and responding to their e-mails.  They can try to check it everyday, but for that last few days at my husbands site, the system was down and when it came back up the lines were too long.

For my kids who are so used to communicating electronically, it is better than writing a letter, addressing an envelope, putting on a stamp and delivering it to the post office. Then waiting for dad to receive it and then reply, reversing the whole process.  They sit at the computer, type a quick message and hit send.  The hardest part for them is remembering to sign on to the special e-mail link to check to see if dad has sent a response. 

I have used it myself and will admit that the speed of the system certainly beats the snail mail, but I am cautious of the system itself.  We have been told that all the e-mails are reviewed and knowing that you can never really delete a file, there are just things that I do not want to be part of the electronic footprint that I leave.  An old fashioned letter is still my preferred way of communicating.  I still look forward to coming home and finding a letter from him waiting to be opened, slowly read, then read again before responding to what he might have written.  So I can only imagine that he feels the same given his isolation from the rest of us.  One of the corrections officers likes to tease him about "getting some loving" when ever one of my many letters arrives.  He was thrilled at Christmas time when he received a whole pile of holiday cards from other families in my group, most of whom he has never met. 

So thank you to the Federal prison system for finally installing the e-mail, and I will use it, but for now the personal touch and thought that goes into a hand written note seems to mean so much more to the sender and the recipient that I will continue to support my local United States Post Office.  However given the price of postage and the lack of mail they are carrying, I think I may be one of the only people left out there still sending letters the old fashioned way.