For decades, correctional administrators have embraced a difficult but important principle that people in prison need to remain connected to the outside world. It is an important part of success upon reentry.

Research has consistently shown that communication with family members, attorneys, educators, and community organizations helps maintain relationships that become critical after release. Letters from children, birthday cards, photographs, and legal correspondence are more than mail, they are often an incarcerated person's most tangible connection to life beyond prison walls.

All prisons have phones, email, visitation and letters to keep those connections. But in recent years, the very system designed to preserve those relationships has become one of corrections' greatest security challenges.