Akademik

n.

A letter to the editor sent by a prison inmate.

In prisons across the country, with their artificial pre-Internet worlds where magazines are one of the few connections to the outside and handwritten correspondence is the primary form of communication, the art of the pen-to-paper letter to the editor is thriving. Magazine editors see so much of it that they have even coined a term for these letters: jail mail.

—Jeremy W. Peters, " The Handwritten Letter, an Art All but Lost, Thrives in Prison: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/08/business/media/08jailmail.html," The New York Times, January 7, 2011

The letter from inmate \#374155 had lain on my desk, buried amid piles of correspondence and research for a few days. I get a lot of "jail mail" and I know what to expect.

—Fannie Flono, " From inmate 374155: Don't drop out: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2010/10/01/1729414/from-inmate-374155-dont-drop-out.html," Charlotte Observer, October 1, 2010

I am at least partially responsible for the Texas Monthly ban on prison subscriptions. We are a small company whose roots began with advertising in TM in 1986.I have a file that we built titled jail mail, all attributable to TM. ... Being in the jewelry business, I consider all correspondence with inmates a security risk.

—C. Kirk Root, " Conned by cons: http://www.houstonpress.com/2000-08-31/news/letters-08-31-2000/2/," Houston Press, August 31, 2000

See also this excerpt: http://books.google.com/books?id=YNUDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA25&dq=%22jail+mail from the August 1973 issue of Ebony, which includes a letter from a prison inmate where the heading above the letter is "Jail Mail".