Some items banned by the Oregon Department of Corrections are understandable, ie, “Weapons or Explosives” and “Escape Device”.

The mail-rooms at all Oregon prisons are instructed to refuse sexually explicit material. Fair enough, you might think (maybe not?) but it is the definitions they provide that make me chuckle. I quote, “Personal Photographs (i.e. individual print or copy or photograph extracted from another source) in which the subject is nude … or exposes any portion of the female breast below the top of the areola.”

Also banned, “Polaroid type photographs with a chemical substance on the back of the photograph.”