What Happens to Your Letter After You Mail It to Big Muddy River
If you're used to dropping a handwritten letter in the mail and knowing it arrives exactly as you wrote it, Big Muddy River works differently. IDOC uses an electronic scanning system for incoming non-privileged mail. Here's what gets scanned, how your loved one receives it, what it costs, and what happens to your originals.
Big Muddy River (IDOC) scans and/or photocopies all incoming non-privileged mail. What does that mean for you? Most general letters you send get converted to an electronic or photocopied version. Your loved one won't receive the original paper you mailed.
- ✓ Written correspondence
- ✓ Greeting cards
- ✓ Drawings
- ✓ Photos
A few things skip the scanning process: publications, photos sent directly from photo printing service companies, and official government documents (like birth certificates and Social Security cards).
Mailroom staff scan your non-privileged mail in color. They capture the front and back of the envelope plus everything inside - letters, greeting cards, photographs. All of it gets saved as PDF images.
Those PDFs go to your loved one's Bulletin Board, a digital storage area where they can access their scanned mail.
Once the upload is complete, your loved one gets a notification. They can then download and view the scanned mail on their tablet.
The electronic mail scanning is free - no cost to you or your loved one.
No tablet access? No problem. Anyone without a tablet receives paper photocopies of their mail instead.
Heads up: IDOC cannot return original mail after scanning. If you're sending something irreplaceable - like a one-of-a-kind drawing - make a copy to send and keep the original at home.
Since your letter gets scanned and saved as a PDF, the version your loved one reads will typically be digital on their tablet. If they want a paper copy of a specific message, they should ask inside the facility about current options and the steps to request one.
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