Key Points: 

• Prison legal mail policy sparks court access concerns statewide

• Advocates worry that the policy will lead to delays, missed deadlines, and inmate litigation.

• Corrections department defends policy as secure and legally sound 

Advocates and attorneys for state prison inmates are on alert after a new policy that went into effect on July 13 reroutes legal mail, potentially hindering inmates’ access to the courts. 

Instead of heading directly to a prison complex, all legal mail – defined as correspondence from a court, judge, attorney, or legal paraprofessional – must be shipped to a central address in Phoenix for contraband inspection. 

Attorneys and legal paraprofessionals are also required to register and print a specialized barcode on each piece of mail in order to reach an inmate. 

Advocates plan to monitor for delays in delivery, missed filing deadlines, case dismissals, and obstructed access to justice in cases involving criminal appeals, prison conditions, retaliation, excessive force, inadequate medical care, and family court cases. 

They worry that this might be especially true for inmates representing themselves in court. 

A spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union said the organization might sue to end the new policy.

“We will see how much legal mail is returned. We’ll get some sense of how many people are missing critical court deadlines as a result of the new policy, and we’ll have to consider what action to take in light of that,” said David Fathi, director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project.  “But it certainly is a significant and apparently needless interference with legal communication for incarcerated people.” 

The Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry determined that centralized security scans and barcodes are crucial to stopping the flow of drugs and contraband into state prisons. 

But criminal justice groups claim the department has provided no evidence that legal mail is a major entry point.   

Monthly reports from the department show between 300 and about 420 contraband cases each month. Drugs account for most cases, with around 200 to 300 reported each month over the past year. 

 Advocates do not dispute that mail provides an avenue to introduce illicit materials into prisons, nor that stopping the flow of contraband is an important goal. 

But Fathi and Donna Hamm, executive director of Middle Ground Prison Reform, contend the department has provided no evidence that legal mail is a major source. 

 Hamm pointed to an internal intelligence report from July 12-18, 2025, which showed the department scanned 10,929 pieces of mail across all state prison complexes. Of the 10,929, the agency reported 17 positive contraband finds. 

Impact on pro se litigants

Kristofer Seneca, an inmate at Arizona State Prison Complex Eyman, began studying law while in county jail at age 17. He filed his first lawsuit from behind bars in 1995. 

Over the past 30 years, he’s sued prison officials over protection issues, religious policy and retaliation. Beyond timelines, Seneca said that access to evidence is a key challenge in litigating against the department. 

As a pro se litigant, Seneca said the department’s attorneys often “argue everything in existence to prevent us from obtaining evidence, from false security concerns to lack of relevance.” 

Seneca added he and other inmates often rely on people on the outside to obtain evidence. 

But changes to mail policies now make it nearly impossible to secure affidavits, declarations, emails and documents needed to support legal claims, as inmates are barred from printing or making copies of any documents sent via mail. 

He recently raised the issue in a new lawsuit. Seneca claims retaliation from the department after he was transferred from his original housing unit and lost programming amid litigation against the department. 

In the case, he claimed the mail policy was an “imminent threat of interference with access to the courts.” 

“We have constitutional rights, and those are important; they include the right to practice religion, to not be retaliated against, to obtain medical and mental health care, to appeal our convictions, to eat, to sleep, to communicate with family and friends, and many others,” Seneca said. “When those are violated, people must be held to account.”

Slower or safer?

John Fabricius, executive director of Praxis Initiative, who was formerly incarcerated by ADCRR, noted that the existing legal scheme for inmates, in particular, already requires strict adherence to both the administrative processes established by correctional agencies and the deadlines set out in law for courts. 

“An incarcerated person can lose a case without a court ever deciding whether their constitutional rights were violated,” Fabricius said. “In some cases, procedural defaults can prevent a court from ever reaching the merits of a constitutional claim, regardless of how strong that claim might be.”

Fathi said he is also concerned about how often the department will transport mail from its central facility to state prisons located everywhere from Yuma to Kingman. 

“Are they going to transport every day? Are they going to do it once a week, once a month? We don’t know. If the mailroom officer decides that a piece of legal mail doesn’t comply with the new policy, it gets returned to the sender – how long is that going to take?” Fathi said. “That clock is ticking while a piece of critically important legal mail is traveling all over the state as a result of this policy.”

The department, meanwhile, maintains the policy is legally sound and workable for all parties involved.

“Overall, the resulting process will be more streamlined, consistent, and safer. It will not impede access to or confidentiality of legal communications,” a spokesperson for the department said in a statement. “As stated previously, ADCRR is fully confident in the appropriateness, legality, and constitutionality of the changes being made.“