One of the most extensive reports on prison communication policies in the twentieth century is an obscure work of an obscure government bureaucrat. In late 1912, J. J. Sanders, the Parole Clerk at the Arizona State Prison, on his own initiative surveyed mail policies in U.S. state prisons.^ Sanders subsequently published a ten-page pamphlet entitled Prison Reform. This pamphlet presented Sanders’ prisoner mail survey data, along with information about the expansion of Arizona State Prison’s library, its parole statistics, and some of Sanders’ opinions on penal reform.
Soon after beginning work at Arizona State Prison in late 1912 or early 1913, Sanders advocated unlimited daily mail for prisoners.^ Arizona State Prison soon adopted that change:
The present administration {in Arizona} inaugurated a daily mail for the prisoners. All inmates can now write as many letters to their relatives and friends as they wish. They are also at liberty to receive as many letters are written them by their friends and relatives, subject to ordinary inspection.
Arizona State Prison also began to provide prisoners with leading newspapers, magazines, and scientific books. Sanders applauded the effects of these changes. As a good bureaucrat, he also praised his boss:
The letters from mothers, sisters, brothers, relatives, and friends to the inmates always bring cheer and wholesome advice. This one avenue alone is working wonders in the upbuilding of the characters of all the men incarcerated here. Let me pause here to remark — and I say it with a full knowledge of the great and lasting results attained — if {Arizona} Gov. Hunt never did anything else for the convicts, their mothers, sisters, relatives, and friends, he would deserve a monument as rugged and lasting as the silent sentinel of Yavapai — Old Thumb Butte. Not only has the letter mail driven gloom and despair from within the gray walls, but the instructive features of our family newspapers and magazines have lent their balm to heal the sores caused by worry and blasted hopes.
Sanders associated personal letters, mass-media newspapers, and magazines as means of education:
If restrictions are placed on these great educators — personal letters, newspapers, and magazines — it at once becomes apparent that all such institutions employing this primitive method or custom are in a very backward condition, and it must necessarily follow that such prisons can not be rated other than as breeding places for crime. To change a man we must change the current of his thoughts, and this can be done only by education.^
The publishing industry historically has distinguished personal letters from newspapers, magazines, and books. Sanders seems to have had a social view of text and communication, a view now only starting to be realized in the Internet era.
About a year after publishing Prison Reform, Sanders published a second, longer pamphlet focused exclusively on prisoners’ mail. In that work, Sanders declared:
Nothing will make a person more morose and sullen than to be denied the God-given liberty of communication with his loved ones and his own dearest friends. The wonder to me is that there is not more riots in the penal institutions denying the inmates the privilege of communicating with their loved ones whenever they desire. Put yourself in the place of the one who is denied the right to write and receive letters, magazines, and newspapers. In ten days of such treatment you would be a fit subject for the alienists {antecedents of psychiatrists}, yet state governments expect to make persons fit for the day of liberty by these insane and abominable restrictions.^
Sanders again reported in full the results of his survey of state prisons’ policies for prisoners’ mail. In addition, Sanders quoted at length selected public figures’ views on restricting prisoners’ mail:
Although nearly every penal institution in the United States has in the past, or at least until recently, exercised regulations greatly restricting prisoners’ mail, it is difficult to conceive of any just or practicable reason for limiting the prisoners to writing or receiving of only one or two letters per month. To a man confined within prison walls a free and unlimited correspondence with friends and relatives on the outside should prove a very important factor for his betterment. I confidently look forward to the day when prisoners’ correspondence will be free from any numerical restrictions.
— George Wylie Hunt, Governor of Arizona
I could never see the sense of cutting a prisoner off from communication with the outside world, and believe that such a course long-continued tends to besodden the already resentful mind of the poor unfortunate man who has trespassed the law so that, for a time, he is taken from the walks of life and you return him later a meaner creature. I approve of my prisoners reading the daily papers whenever they can and believe that they are never hurt by keeping up with the events and happenings of the world, but, on the contrary, their minds are brightened with current literature, and I encourage social intercourse among them, let them play ball, football and the like; and, indoors, reading, writing to their loved ones, and indulging in music, for which I have allowed instruments for those with a talent.
— J. C. Gathings, Superintendent, Mississippi State Prison
In most prisons, prisoners are allowed to write one letter per month, and no more. … There is no reason under the blue sky why a convict should not be allowed to send out as many letters of a social nature as he cares to buy postage stamps for.
— Elbert Hubbard, in The Fra, September, 1914
What good reason is there for any restriction of a prisoners’ mail, except to see that drugs, weapons and the like are not delivered to them? Restriction is the rule, however, rather than the exception. … These restrictions belong to the era — only now beginning to pass away — when the object of prison discipline was frankly to crush and dehumanize.
— George Horace Lorimer, editor, Saturday Evening Post, about Feb., 1914^
In the 1910s, a small, diverse group of citizens actively advocated for liberalization of prisoners’ mail. Ella Dann Moore, a bureaucrat at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was a “Mother of the Movement” for prisoner mail liberalization.^ Sanders’ distinctive contribution to that movement was his collecting comprehensive data on prisoner mail policies in U.S. state prisons.