Gay prison pals

This program is entirely free so that it is accessible to the widest range of penpals possible. We are fine with romantic partners starting a PenPod together, but we ask that you do so thoughtfully and with care.

Male Prison Friendship Write : Find prison pen pals seeking friendship, employment, and education

A few years back, one of our outside penpals organized a group of their friends to support their incarcerated penpal’s upcoming release. A PenPod is simply what we’re calling a group of 2–4 friends writing to a single incarcerated queer or trans person.

This is a highly intentional choice designed to help your PenPod act collaboratively in support of your penpal and keep everyone on the same page. If you break up in the future and need to dissolve your PenPod into separate PenPal Inboxes, contact us right away at letters powerblossoms.

One member of your PenPod is having a busy semester, lost their job, or is moving across the country? According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice, in more than million people were incarcerated and 90% will be released one day. Keep your own safety in mind when deciding whether to disclose personal information about yourself in your letters!

Do not speak down to, discriminate against, shame, or condescend your penpals. Recidivism is. If you truly believe one-on-one penpaling is right for you or your only option, we do still offer that as a possibility—though we'll ask you during the sign-up process to consider some ways to receive extra support in fulfilling your commitment.

How to Find an :

We thought, What if everyone had that support network from the outset? We are about building relationships and validating that our struggles as people of color, activists, sex workers, youth workers, immigrants, anti-capitalist, trans, queer, gender-nonconforming people are intricately connected with prison abolition and liberation.

If you are able to, please donate to support it! Your password-protected PenPod Inbox is where our all-volunteer, community-funded team will scan and upload mail we receive from your penpal at our Los Angeles PO Box. No stamps, no envelopes, and no trips to the post office needed!

We set up only one password-protected inbox in our database per PenPod, meaning all members of your group can see all letters mailed to and received from your inside penpal. Our database is maintained by the same people who print, mail, and scan your letters.

Please look further down the page for info on where to review our foundational agreements for becoming an individual PenPal. Other than that, your correspondence is confidential and private with one major exception:. You can sign up for that here.

While our inside members value the birthday cards we mail them, there is no substitute for consistent communication. You can decide for yourselves whether to write your letters together or on your own, but the benefits of acting collectively remain the same: you are able to support one another through the ups and downs of writing to someone in prison, and your inside penpal receives more of the consistent communication they need.

We will never read your personal mail unless specifically requested by you. Please be aware that prison guards often read incoming mail:. We believe that pairing small groups of friends on the outside with a single incarcerated penpal can address both these issues.

You can decide for yourselves whether to write your letters. Keep in mind that your one-on-one support will be as friendship only —our program is not for people seeking romantic relationships, even as we recognize and affirm the importance of such intimacy whether inside or outside prison walls.

You might be surprised who in your life could be up for joining you in this undertaking if you share about it with them, answer their questions, and listen to their concerns. Penpals might stop writing for any number of reasons, but two themes emerged: those outside prison A became too preoccupied with other life matters to keep up the correspondence, or B felt unable on their own to support their penpal through the difficult situations presented by incarceration.

It is our hope that the PenPod Program can bring people into prisoner letter-writing who would otherwise never have considered it, over time growing the community of people who care about our queer and trans family behind bars.

Someone else is on hand to ensure that the penpal friendship continues! is a pen-pal service dedicated to those in the prison system! If you would strongly prefer to become an individual PenPal instead, head here. Our goal is to reduce recidivism by giving inmates the feeling of love, affection, and belongingness which is instinctually vital to all people both free and imprisoned.