Correspondence with others has helped me to learn more about myself and others, and that’s made me grow stronger and wiser. Prison is a very dark, lonely experience if you have no one on the outside to speak with.
You can add inmate Pen-pal and Legal Profiles here and make changes to existing profiles and renew profiles.
View inmate Educational, Employment, and Housing profiles. Post these at no charge.
We will send a Welcome Home Kit to any inmate being released who has no support system.
Correctional facilities can request free learning materials, and you can donate to them.
Locate incarcerated friends and family not listed on our website.
What are prison pen-pals? Prison pen-pals are inmates who exchange letters with non-incarcerated pen-pals. Inmates have been turning to our WriteAPrisoner.com program since its inception in 2000 to find mentors, legal aid, educational opportunities, employment upon release, counseling, housing options, and so much more. We post profiles, photos, and contact information of inmates. You, the viewer, can then select which prisoners you would like to correspond with, both men and women, after viewing personal (interests, goals, etc.) and public (crime, release date, etc.) information.
Once you have selected a prison pen-pal to correspond with on our app, you have the option of sending your first message free of charge. Contact with prison pen-pals is then maintained via postal mail or programs like CorrLinks and JPay. Inmates cannot access their WriteAPrisoner.com profiles online in any capacity. We are a pen-pal website only. Inmates pay for pen-pal profiles. That income is used for operating costs as well as our Scholarships, Welcome Home Kits, Reintegration Profiles, and other community programs targeted at reducing recidivism.
Research shared on our Why WriteAPrisoner page and the Federal Bureau of Prisons shows that both male and female prison pen-pals who establish and maintain positive contacts outside of prison walls, pursue educational opportunities, and seek normalization through friendship, are less likely to re-offend. Inmates from county jails, state prisons, federal prisons, on death row, and in rehabilitation centers across the country have posted profiles. We also have prisoners listed from outside of the United States.
You can conduct an inmate search of inmates not listed on our website by using our Inmate Locator. We also encourage you to visit our Prison Forum to engage with other members about related topics, such as what to expect when you meet an inmate, death row, correspondence, visitation, different departments of corrections, and more.