I knew someone who worked in the prison system about a decade ago. He said that the prisoners didn’t get any letters from the outside that were not photocopies. A letter comes in, gets opened, photocopied and then destroyed. The photocopy was delivered. The prison system has known about paper delivered drugs for a long, long time. Therefore, I call BS on the reason.
Having had a few prison employees as tenants I can tell you they’ll hire anyone and if they do a background check the bar to getting the job is low enough a Chihuahua would have to duck under it.
The protocols on photocopying incoming mail I suspect varies from state to state.
My state doesn’t do that. I know that for a fact because when recently talking to a guard he stated the latest thing is an inmates’ contact on the outside will spray letter paper etc. to be sent in with bug spray and then let it dry....then its mailed in, the inmate receives it then smokes the paper with the bug spray on it to get high.
Now that the facilities have caught on to it it’ll be something else.
Contraband is a real cat and mouse game.