Our program of corresponding with prisoners helps to relieve their loneliness. When a prisoner is reading or writing letters, as one prisoner put it, he can “forget where he is.” We, on the outside, can encourage inmates to take classes and prepare for release. Our letters can create a positive relationship with another human being. And, most importantly, we can give hope.

Get started

If you attend the Orange Grove Friends Meeting, find an inmate with whom you can correspond by contacting the Peace & Social Concerns Committee. To find out more, talk with the Clerk or a committee member or e-mail the committee at peace@ogmm.org.

If you would like to start a prisoner pen pal program, the pages in this section may be helpful. Please feel free to copy any or all of these pages so long as they are used for non-commercial purposes. If you have any questions about permission to copy, use the Contact Form.

How To’s

Suggestions – Writing to Prisoners – This article covers the basics and may well be all you really need.

Mail Rules, California Prisons – About mailing things other than an ordinary letter.

Giving Gifts to Prisoners – About mailing gifts other than stationery.

Tips for Incarcerated Pen Pals – For sending to incarcerated pen pals at the very start of the correspondence.

Prisoner Re-Entry Services – About helping prisoners nearing release who want help with re-entering society.

Prisoner Re-Entry Services, Nationwide, USA

Re-Entry Programs for Registered Sex Offenders (290 Registration)

How We Started Our Prisoner Pen Pal Program

*Some links may no longer work. Prisons are subject to rapidly changing laws, and services to prisoners change rapidly. The result is that Internet links in this area change rapidly. The resources in this section have been compiled by a volunteer and may not have been updated recently. Please consider the links to resources as leads. If you find that a link in the following webpages has strikethroughs and no longer works, you may be able to find a working link to a similar resource by doing an on-line search.