What Happens to Photos and Mail You Send to a VADOC Inmate (photocopying, shredding, and page limits)
When you send letters or photos to someone in a Virginia Department of Corrections (VADOC) facility, they won't receive your originals. VADOC photocopies general mail, delivers the copies, then destroys what you sent.
VADOC treats incoming general correspondence as subject to safety and rule compliance review. Your letter can be opened, searched, and read by authorized staff before it reaches the person you're writing to.
After inspection, VADOC doesn't hand over the original letter. All incoming general correspondence gets photocopied, and only the copies go to the inmate. If you're used to sending handwritten letters or printed photos expecting them to be kept, know that the inmate will receive a copy instead.
Note: General correspondence isn't private the way personal mail is outside prison. Authorized staff can inspect it, and the inmate receives photocopies, not originals.
Once VADOC makes the photocopies, the original envelope and everything inside gets shredded. This includes personal photos. Don't mail anything you'd be devastated to lose, because originals aren't kept.
There's also a hard limit on what the inmate actually receives. VADOC delivers a maximum of three 8.5" x 11" black-and-white photocopied pages per mailing (copies can include both front and back of a page). Send more than that, and the delivered set gets cut to fit the three-page cap.
Heads up: Originals (including photos) are shredded after copying. Only up to three black-and-white letter-size pages are delivered per mailing. Choose what matters most before you send it.
Certain types of mail go through a centralized review process. VADOC's Central Mail Distribution Center receives and inspects incoming legal correspondence, religious correspondence, books, newspapers, magazines, photobooks, personal photographs, commercial photographs, and other publications before forwarding them to a facility for delivery.
Note: These items go through the Central Mail Distribution Center for inspection before being forwarded, so handling may differ from ordinary letters.
Section 4
- ✓ Inmate’s first and last name
- ✓ Inmate’s 7-digit state ID number
- ✓ Facility name
- ✓ Facility ZIP code
Find an Inmate at Keen Mountain Corrections Center, Va
Search for a loved one and send messages and photos in minutes.
