How to help prisoners prepare for reentry.Advice for the prisoners to follow in establishing relationships with their pen pals.The pros and cons of giving gifts to prisoners, whether money, books or other items.Guidelines for writing to prisoners, including what to write, using your organization’s address rather than your own, only using your first name at the beginning and other tips.It has a wealth of information on its website to help other groups and individuals get started. The Orange Grove Friends Meeting in Pasadena, Calif., organizes a prison pen pal correspondence program in which members correspond with between 20 and 30 people. This is a thoughtful option but certainly not a requirement for a successful program. That way church participants don’t have to worry about being asked for money or other things. Two of the churches provide funding to the pen pals - $250 goes into an account for each of them every year, so they can purchase items from the commissary. Their attitude was that society had forgotten about them, and to have people writing to them was totally unexpected.” It’s been amazing to see the reaction from the inmates,” he says. “We encourage volunteers to write a letter at least once a month. We want to know that the inmates who have come to us for fellowship are getting it,” Olive says. “It’s an opportunity for each volunteer to report in on how it’s going with their inmate. People who are interested are invited to come and get more information. “What prompted me was a passage from Matthew 25 which encourages us to visit the prisoners.”Īnd now Olive facilitates the program, which also includes people who aren’t associated with the three churches. “I thought why not? Why couldn’t I do that?” Olive says. Paul’s eight years ago, the pastor said that if anyone is interested in writing or visiting inmates on death row, see him after the service. When Richard Olive, who is now the group’s facilitator and head of volunteer outreach for the church, was at a service at St. It grew from there, and now includes 28 people who are writing to and/or visiting prisoners on Death Row at San Quentin Prison. The program began about 25 years ago with the pastor of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church of San Rafael and two other churches in Marin County, California, is an example of one of these groups. The Death Row Ministry, made up members of St. One of the best ways to get involved with prison pen pals is through an established group, and a growing number of religious organizations are taking the activity on as part of their mission. The two studied an organization called Prisoners’ Penfriends and through questionnaires and interviews found that the pen pal relationship made the prisoners “feel less isolated, helped change their self-identity, provided a distraction, boosted their happiness and raised their hopes for life beyond prison.” In addition, “volunteers spoke of how they get feelings of enjoyment and satisfaction writing to their penfriends – seeing the letters as a two-way relationship, which broadens their outlook on life.” Religious groups create relationships – the only academic study on the subject of prison pen pals we know of. The benefits of those looking for friendship, in particular, is confirmed by research done by Professor Jacqueline Hodgson and PhD student Juliet Horne at the University of Warwick in the U.K. But still others just want a genuine correspondence relationship with someone on the outside. Some people say the prisoners are looking for love – and some websites are designed for that. They do it for different reasons, and the experience gets mixed reviews. Many people decide to establish a relationship with a prisoner by writing to them through a prison pen pal program or website.
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