Anyone Ever Written a Prisoner?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I just saw a program about it and it got me to wondering if this is something I should consider. I’m not really looking for anything in particular, just to help someone to not feel so alone. But that said, I figure it would be pretty wise to protect myself as much as possible and go with a few ground rules…

[ol]
[li]No one from the same state as I am.[/li][li]No straight men (hence no possibility for a ‘relationship’ to arise).[/li][li]No one on death row.[/li][/ol]

Any other suggestions? And if you’ve done this before, how has it turned out? Does it truly seem to make a difference to them? I really don’t want to undertake something if there’s too much potential for it to go wrong or not to benefit anyone.

Thanks in advance for any help.

2

Hmm…have you considered writing to a soldier instead?

3

Yes, I have done it. Plenty of times, with incarcerated women. It turned out just as I expected. The women were grateful for someone to talk to.

ETA: PO box is the way to go.

4

Theres good and bad in everyone, and yes, I’ve written to several. Still do. Get a PO Box, preferably not in the same town as you live in. You never know who is getting ready to parole and might show up at your door. I’m not sure why “no death row” - some of those guys (at least in California) can be there for decades. I don’t know how you’re gonna get a non-straight male, unless you write to women. Most gay men aren’t gonna advertise it on a penpal website.
That said, mail means a lot to those guys. Yes, you can really make a difference. Some of the guys have NO ONE outside and their entire world is the prison. Blecch! And should you ever have a problem, all you have to do is call the wardens office and they will send the goon squad out to make VERY sure he realizes that further communication would be…undesirable.

5

Yes, I’m corresponding with a guy I was in Vietnam with. He’s finishing up a 30 spot for murder and should be out in a year or so.

6

How are you going to find a gay man?

7

One of the websites, writeaprison.com, allows for searchs just pertaining to sexual orientation. As to not writing to a deathrow inmate, I just figured I’d become to emotionally involved.

And the suggestion of writing to a soldier is a good one. Perhaps I can do both.

Oh, and thanks for the P.O. Box idea. I’d never considered that.

8

*The below comments really pertain to poor ghetto, mostly black prisoners.

I don’t wanna wet blanket this idea, because I am completely all for writing to men, but!

A few things about going with men vs. women, and this is just my opinion.

  1. Men are more likely to ‘catch feelings’ as we say. They are likely to take it to a sexual level (over letters)

  2. Men have more connections, from what I can tell than women in jail. Men have a certain ‘code’ that many of their friends or fellow crime-buddies are more likely to adhere to that they may ‘hold eachother down’ . Also they are more likely to have a “baby’s mother” at home willing to ‘hold them down’. Whereas many women in prison don’t have the same kind of network

  3. Women are often seperated from children that are literally still breastfeeding. It is a bit harder for them to that that hard time when they have suckling babies at home.

For these reasons, I just prefer to write to women. But of course you would be doing a cool thing to write to men or women.

9

Yeah. About 35 years ago, I corresponded for several months with an inmate at Leavenworth. I don’t remember how it started, probably something to do with the attorneys I was working for.

Anyway, I was in Seattle and he was in Leavenworth so I figured what the heck. Then he killed a guy in Leavenworth (he said) and was transferred to McNeil Island in Washington State. On the way to McNeil, he was held for a brief time in the King County Jail – two blocks from where I worked. He called me from the jail and begged me to come visit but I just couldn’t.

I enjoyed writing to him. He was articulate, had good penmanship, and could spell. Reading his letters was like reading a diary. He talked about his childhood and about life at Leavenworth. He was never really inappropriate but he teetered on the edge a few times, and he sent me a photo where he was sporting a huge boner (clothes on).

I wouldn’t do it again though, not unless the person was in for life. You can’t really know a person through letters. Cons are good at conning. It’s risky. Inmates get transferred all the time, and it’s way too easy to find someone. Heck, an ex (jailbird) of my daughter’s from when we lived in Seattle (almost 20 years ago) recently found her through Facebook and showed up in town, called and asked for her address. The town is really small, and all he had to do was go to the bar and asked where she lived and he’d have been on her doorstep.

10

My former church offered a program like this. The mail was sent to the church, so home addresses were revealed. Quit a lot of sports talk. Inmates who wanted more information about religion were referred to the pastor. It was a nice thing to do, took about 15 minutes a month. A group would gather together, write letters, and then give a dollar or so to the church for postage. We’d get back together to read the responses and write back the following month.

11

I started at www.booksforsoldiers.com and corresponded with a couple of soldiers until they were deployed back to the States. They were both very cool dudes. One of them was into fantasy fiction and wrote how he’d look at the shadows made by helicopters and think they were dragons. The other was in charge of entertainment for his company. I collected books and DVDs for him. (The last time a man was that grateful for something I did, I had to get shots.)

Did you know that you can look at Amazon wish lists by military address? Put in a last name (any name) and APO, FPO or AE (I think it’s AE) and you’ll get lists. It’s really fun to send something anonymously. Amazon does the shipping and you don’t have to fill out a customs form. :slight_smile:

12

Almost twenty years ago. I wrote to probably to two dozen or so over a period of a couple of years. Similar story each time:
“I was in an abusive relationship, and got into trouble for bad checks, and I’m looking to start my life over when I get out. . .”

They were all really hot, too! Not quite “women-in-prison-films” hot, but really hot. So they said. And so the pictures that they sent indicated.

Basically, it didn’t take long to find out that there was a cottage industry inside prison walls of women prisoners taking out personal adds in order to solicit money “to help pay off restitution” or “to help pay for stuff at the canteen,” etc. I think some of the photos might have been of actual prisoners, but whether or not they were the ones I was writing to, who knows?

Then, one day I received a letter from the Attorney General of the state of Arkansas. It informed me that my address had been found in correspondence going to a prison, and could I please fill out a quesitonnaire about my correspondence? The letter went on to indicate that the investigation was on how women were soliciting money from many, many different men, promising each one of them that they were coming their way just as soon as they were released, and that that these were all fraudulent. Many of these women had life sentences for violent crimes, and some of them were not even the race that they had presented in their ads. (Yes, the letter said exactly that.)

I filled it out and sent it back. Never heard anything more either from the AG of AR, nor from the prison babe. Don’t know what the results were. I would be curious to know what her real crime was, and how and if she ever got out from it, though.

I know that something similar happened in Texas around the same time, so apparently the AGs of a number of states got on the bandwagan of cracking down on these prison babes.

In any case, after they requested money several times and never received it, they seemed to lose interest in corresponding. Oh, well. . . .

13

I’m hoping you meant NOT revealed. I read that several times, but I don’t understand it otherwise.

14

I’m sure there are scores of pedophiles, rapists, murderers, etc, across the nation that would just LOVE to interact with you.

what a noble thing you would be doing…

15

You’re probably just engaging in hyperbole, but naturally not everyone in prison is a violent criminal. There are plenty of people in for financial, drug, or other crimes. I wrote to an Internet friend who was in prison for a few years for a non-violent crime, and other friends and I sent him books via Amazon. The letters and books helped keep his spirits up, and he was able to loan the books around to other prisoners too.

16

NOW you have interested me. :slight_smile:

17

Sigmagirl, it makes ya feel like Santa Claus. Open the Wish List link at Amazon. Enter a last name – Smith or Pryzbelewski, whatever. Since that’s not enough info, Amazon will ask for an address. Enter AE or APO and you’ll get a bunch of lists. You won’t be able to tell if the person is in a cushy post in Germany or a hellhole in Iraq, but that doesn’t matter – they’re not at home.

18

One of my cousins is in jail till he dies. I write him occasionally, but only to be nice to his mom.

19

I’ve run a few small punk music magazines, and I’ve had quite a few requests for copies from prisoners. Some I just sent zines to (staples removed), some I swapped letters with a few times. One or two sent me their own zines, made in prison - fascinating stuff. Lots of poetry about freedom, regret, sex. Lots of tattoo or tag style artwork. Lots of short stories about fights in prison, that kind of thing.

Having something specific to discuss made it not as sketchy as just swapping info, but a lot of those folks are dying to just have someone to talk to. I remember one guy, gay and out, who told me all about being transferred away from his in-prison boyfriend, and how they were both working hard to get released so they could be back together.

Oh, but yeah - no one wants to admit to a violent crime. It was all drugs, drunken property destruction, theft, etc. No idea if any of that was true, but it didn’t really matter to me. Punk rockers in prison are desperate for info about their favorite bands, regardless of what they did to get there.

20

How about asking Amnesty International for adresses of political prisoners you can write?