Join our Holiday Card Campaign! You’ll be able to click through this site to receive the addresses of 5, 10, or 15 incarcerated members to send some holiday love to our inside family! Click the “Holiday Cards” button to get started!
At Black & Pink, we coordinate a nationwide PenPal program in which we match incarcerated LGBTQIA2S+ people and people living with HIV/AIDS with PenPals who correspond, build relationships, and participate in harm reduction and affirmation. For an incarcerated LGBTQIA2S+ person, corresponding with someone on a regular basis is itself a harm reduction strategy, giving that person a support network outside of prison.
How To Be An Awesome PenPal!
Thoughts to consider when writing to someone who is incarcerated:Adapted from the guidelines created for the Write to Win Collective and the Prisoner Correspondence Project
1. Why do I want to write to someone in prison?
It’s really important that we all take some time to ask ourselves what we want to get out of this penpal friendship. It is absolutely okay to not have a full articulated answer, but it is good to ask yourself what your motivations are. We all carry our own assumptions and need to continuously challenge them. Ask yourself what assumptions you might have about people who are incarcerated and how that might impact the way you write. These are good conversations to have with others who are also penpals. Check out our Black & Pink PenPal Support Group on Facebook.
2. What is my capacity?
For many incarcerated people, receiving one or two letters from someone promising to correspond regularly but failing to follow up with further correspondence can be incredibly difficult. Being a penpal doesn’t have to be an intense time commitment; letters can be as long or as short as you want them to be. Please be upfront about the regularity that you will be able to write. We suggest writing at least twice per month. If your capacity is only once a month, let them know. At this time, we have restricted our outside penpals to selecting two incarcerated penpals, to help ensure that frequent communication with one or two penpals occurs.
3. How might I deal with hearing about the prison system?
Writing with folks in prison can often lead to an intense learning experience about what incarceration really means for those navigating the prison system in the US. It’s important to have support systems to deal with the stories of trauma you might hear. It is also very helpful to share these revelations with your community to deconstruct what you learn and how you might participate unwittingly in the system. Individual penpal relationships can sometimes lead to a desire to do far more advocacy for that individual or to abolish the system as a whole. We can succeed far more when we work to navigate this world together.
Important Things to Know When Writing:
Reply letters might take a while
Openness about LGBTQ identities
Building validating relationships
Setting boundaries
Your personal information
Funds
Romantic or sexual letters
Write Your Penpal!
Determining how you will write your penpal
Online mail services
JMail.cc
Jmail will print and mail your message to your penpal for about $1 per letter. Your penpal writes to their address, and they will email you a scan of their reply letter for about $1 per letter, plus $25 annual fee.
Corrlinks
Incarcerated members in Federal prisons can access this basic email service. It will email you when you have a message in your inbox. (Note that most of Black & Pink’s incarcerated members, and likely your penpal, are in State prisons where Corrlinks does not work.)
JPay
JPay works in many prison systems. JPay has two modes, depending on the prison:Access Corrections
SecureMail at Access Corrections allows you to message your penpal back and forth for a fee.
“Snail Mail”
Letter vs Postcard vs Card
An envelope with a letter on normal paper is the safest bet.The rules around acceptable mail vary widely. Some prison systems, like Texas, have decided to ban all postcards and greeting cards as a way to prevent drugs… Some won’t accept construction paper, or mailing labels, or glitter. Pennsylvania scans all mail in a facility in Florida and then prints it.
Typed vs Handwritten
You will see on this website that some incarcerated members have indicated that they need to receive typed letters, perhaps due to a reading or vision impairment. Otherwise, handwritten letters should be fine! Some prisons don’t allow the use of markers, crayons etc., so writing with a pen or pencil is the safest bet.
Your Incarcerated PenPal’s Legal Name
Typically, prisons require legal first and last names to be used on envelopes. When you select a penpal on this website, their preferred name for letters is written at the top of their profile, and their legal name for envelopes is included in the address block. In your first letter, confirm the name and pronouns your penpal wants when addressing envelopes and writing letters.
Return address options
Be sure to include your return address in the letter (some inside members do not receive the envelope). Many of us feel nervous about sharing personal information with brand new people in our lives and that is quite reasonable. However, we recognize that there is extra stigma around sharing information with incarcerated people. We encourage everyone to do what feels right and best for themselves while at the same time looking deeper at what is causing fear, and work on that as we build our movement towards abolition. In general, we encourage people to use their home address and to take time to question where these anxieties are coming from. If you are not willing to share your address with your penpal, you can get a PO box, or use an online service.
Your Name, Address, and Introduction
Use your first and last name in your letters. It might be useful to say in the first letter that you found out about the person through the Black & Pink website. Be sure to place your address both in the letter and on the return address piece of the envelope, as some prisons do not allow the envelope to be given to the prisoner. Know that prison guards often read the mail and, unfortunately, can censor things.
Format the address for an envelope
Please remember to include your return address on the envelope and the letter itself. You should write the letter itself to your penpal’s preferred name.