I think I've talked about this here before, but we had a friend (mostly my husband's
) who was in prison on prescription drug charges for a little over a year. In that time I was shocked how much I learned.
- You can Google it - there are dozens if not hundreds of websites devoted to supporting the prisoners, families, friends. etc. MANY of these include places for prisoners to ask for pen pals, or friends/family to ask people to be their pen pals. This includes death row and other prisoners. The only rule I've seen consistently is you have to be over 18.
- There's a whole industry devoted to knowing the complicated rules and regulations on what prisoners can and can't receive at the different facilities, how often, etc. For example they can get maybe a quarterly package worth up to $100 as long as it's within certain weight and size requirements, and there are companies devoted to putting together these packages that are ordered by family, friends, probably pen pals.
- Maybe some jails/prisons do it differently, but there is NO WAY in heck he was writing to us without it being obvious it was coming from a prisoner, and that's from 3 different facilities he was in. It was stamped in huge red letters all over the envelope, and was actually pretty embarassing! The first time he sent us "jail mail," the mail carrier checked to make sure it was ok to deliver it. And my gosh if you accidentally break one of the rules it's even more embarassing. We once got a letter returned stamped something like "nudity not allowed, with a further handwritten note below it saying 'no nudity!'" I was mortified when I got THAT out of the mailbox. It had a picture of him with his girlfriend, who was apparently wearing too skimpy of a tank top. NOT nude, not even suggestive. Anyway, sorry, OT.
- Yes IMO the prisoners are pretty desparate for outside contact. One time when our friend got transferred and we didn't know yet, his former cell-mate got one of our letters by mistake. He sent it back, with a big long letter of his own telling me what he'd done (his crime), was sorry he accidentally opened the letter, but it was such a nice letter, how he had found God, and was reformed, and he was hoping I'd write to him too. I almost sent a quick note thanking him for returning the stuff but my husband made the good point that I really, really didn't need any additional "pen pals" especially people I don't know at all, and people who (in this case) would be getting out in a year or two.
Sorry, that got kind of long but wanted to share some of my own personal experience on this topic.