Postally Sent Envelopes With Improper Postage Or No Postage

Here's a small collection of envelopes I've collected with improper postage OR no postage. My rural water district allows me tear off and keep the right side of the envelopes while I'm there making my monthly payment. Please post pics of any that you have seen. I find it interesting that these get through.












*** Moved by Staff to a more appropriate forum. ***

alub

I don't know if prison inmates have franking privileges.

The department provides correctional programs, disaster services, environmental services, holiday assistance, law enforcement services, substance abuse services and youth services for the unincorporated areas of Los Angeles County and contracting cities.
Address: 441 Bauchet St. Los Angeles CA 90012
Website: http://shq.lasdnews.net/pages/PageD...aspx?id=1716
Hours: SITE HOURS: Monday through Sunday, 24 hours per day. Visiting hours are Thursday through Sunday, 10:00am to 4:00pm and 5:00pm to 7:00pm.


Books Thru Bars receives piles of letters each week from prisoners throughout the country requesting books. They do their best to fill those orders.

Received this in the mail a few days ago. Illegal use of a postal card but I liked the bold way the sender used stamps to attach it to the envelope.
Don

I'm not aware of any franking privileges. Nor am I aware of writing :"F..R..A..N..K.." being recognized by the post office.

But I know that I do see prisoner mail with all kinds of attempts to reuse postage.

alub

I haven't seen a similar letter and really didn't know. I did google it and came across a website that contained this tidbit:

Prisoners writing letters
Each week a prisoner is allowed to send one free letter. If they want to send more than this then they need to purchase stamps and envelopes from the prison shop/canteen. Alternatively you can post self addressed stamped envelopes to the prisoner so they can post letters back to you. If a prisoner is on remand then they are allowed to send 2 free letters a week.

So, I guess the answer is yes, they can send a limited number of letters free. Over and above that limited number they need to have postage stamps.

What an interesting topical that would make....Prison inmate mail.

The postage would be paid by the prison on that one letter as there is no "free frank" ability for inmates granted by the USPS.

That said, it is quite easy to slip oddities through the Postal Service's machinery since most mail is not seen by human eyes until the carrier is putting it in the destination mailbox.

John

I went through some of my covers and I found 11 sent from inmates. Each of them has postage affixed. The cover posted by alub is certainly interesting in that the sender had written FRANK on it and it slipped through without postage. Your explanation makes more sense as to how it may have happened.

The FRANK cover is simply wonderful. A great piece of postal history.

Consider the number of eyes: in the 1950s, before tagging, mail deposited in a blue box on a street corner was taken to a post office, dumped onto a table and hand faced for passing through a canceling machine, then to several manual sortings as it got closer to its destination post office where it was hand-cased by the carrier before going out on a route where it was again seen as it went into the box. It was seen by actual eyes several times in an era with postage due stamps too.

Currently, everything from the jumbled mass in the blue corner box is automatically faced, canceled, bar-coded, sorted and trayed-up in delivery sequence and not seen by a postal employee until it is put into the customer's box. So much easier for a mailer to slip something through - under payments, non-payments, charity seals, etc., since very little postage due is ever detected, marked or collected. They are certainly collectible. It is part of the slippage built on the assumption that most people are honest and the cost of collection exceeds the revenue loss - just like Walmart builds into their prices a certain amount of shrinkage of their stock due to theft.

I question whether this is universally true. Perhaps the writer can identify if the website he visited was describing the situation in a particular state or city.

I imagine that jails and prisons in different cities and states each have slightly different rules.

In the Texas prison system, an inmate may send personal "Free" letters paid for by the state only if they are indigent, that is, they have no money in their prison account. I believe these are limited to a fixed number per week or month. And when they do eventually have money deposited in their account, the cost of those letters is subtracted from their account before they can use any of it for personal purposes.

Letters written by inmates with no money in their account for legal matters, to an attorney, or to the Courts, are not limited as to the number which can be sent during any fixed period, but again, they must repay that cost if they receive a deposit in their account.

To prevent reuse of stamps on incoming mail, the prison mail room staff in Texas punches a hole in each stamp.

The use of "FRANK" or "F.R.A.N.K" for a franking privilege is a "urban legend" that circulates around prisons. Those who get away with it are simply lucky that neither the prison mail room staff nor the USPS catches their letter and returns it.

The Auxiliary Marking Club Newsletter had a few articles on prison and/or jail inmate mail a few years ago. These appeared in Issues No. 13, 14, and 15, all written by the Editor: Tony Wawrukiewicz. Unfortunately these back issues are not available online except to members of the AMC. Scans can probably be obtained form the APRL if one is really interested.

mml1942



Double checked my online reference and am embarrassed to admit I quoted a source that does not apply to any state or city in the US:

https://www.prisonersfamilies.org/contact/