I am new here and new to inmate penpals. I live in Australia, I wrote to an inmate on death row in Chowchilla and she wrote me a wonderful letter back it took about 8 weeks turn around with letters and i am fine with that, I understand she has limits on resources and a certain routine. 6 months have passed since then and I have written her 3 more letters to her and recieved none in return, this morning in my mail I recieved a short note from her saying she has not got any of my letters since my first one.
While I understand their can be mail issues and backlogs at large faciltites I am a little concerned she has not got [I]any[/I] of my other letters, so I presume I have made an error somewhere. Can anyone here please confirm this is the right format for addressing a letter:
First Name Last Name #Number
C. C. W. F. 504-248 Low
PO Box 1508
Chowchilla, CA 93610 USA
I have been using typed adress sticky labels off a printer, should I be handwriting the inmates address on the front instead. I always put my return address on the back.
Any help greatly appreciated
Last post
Any sort of sticker or label on the envelope will alert the mailroom.
A hand-written address, or address printed directly on the envelope is always better.
The mailroom [U]should[/U] return any refused mail to you, but, in my experience, this rarely happens. They just put it in the trash.
Really picky mailrooms will refuse mail if the address is not on the front, top, left-hand corner.
My experience is, that once the mailroom get familiar with your mail, they'll let almost anything through, unopened.
Tyler,
Many thanks for the quick reply. I was just about to print off some more labels, instead I'll wipe the spiderwebs off the old ballpoint and see how we go.
Thankyou too Silas, my inmate has been putting her return address on the top left hand aswell, I'll give it a try and see how we go, makes no difference to me where it goes.