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Must read Terms of Service & Privacy Policy and be at least 18

 
PepsiCola

Hello, good morning, afternoon or evening. I'm an new to this whole website and I can't seem to navigate around. Can you only interact with inmates via these forums or what. Cause I see at the time of this posting less then 200 ppl where active on the site. I'm trying to have get a few pen pals... anybody who can help me would be greatly appreciated 

 

 

 
VioletGrey

Hi Pepsi, 

No, these forums are for us free world people who write to those incarcerated. Inmates don't have access to the internet, but can use a form of email to keep in contact with the outside world. 
You'll want go to the main menu and click "inmate profiles" which is where you'll find all the ads for people in prison looking for pen pals. You can use the inmate search to narrow your field by pretty much anything - age, gender, religion, race, time served, State they're incarcerated in, name... 

I'm going to copy one of my replies to another thread which you might find useful, as will most people new to the site, or thinking about diving into becoming a pen pal. 

There are three main ways to contact inmates: writing snail mail letters, using an email service such as JPay/Corrlinks/ConnectNetwork etc, and the Write a Prisoner "email this inmate now" email (which isn't really an email, but a printed off letter). Below is my copied reply which goes over a bit of the information needed to start your pen pal journey. 
 

There are pros and cons for all types of communication in prison. But writing pen & paper letters are my favourite. 
Pros for letters: they're the only form of communication that runs pretty much whatever happens. You can get phone privileges or email privileges put on suspension, so you fall back to letters. You can get put in the hole, and the only thing you can do is to write letters. 
Another pro is you can mostly write as much as you like. Some facilities have a page limit, but mostly you can write as much as you like in a letter. 
Often, and not always, you can be a bit more open or get into topics a bit more thoroughly because you have time to think, to research maybe, and to compose your thoughts before writing them down on paper. 
Cons of letters: they take a while to get there. Especially if you're overseas, and with COVID being a huge factor, letters are going slower than normal. Letters are not the instant communication were used to.

If your PP is being closely monitored, then mail will be a bit slower so the prison can photocopy/read their mail. 
Not often, mail can get lost. 
Not often, people can pass on your address if they don't want to write to you. 
It does take more effort to put pen to paper to write an actual letter. 
 

I can't speak on JPay, or Corrlinks, but they have their limitations as well. Common complaints are that messages can go "missing", that they vary in time to be delivered between an hour and 3-4 days. Or technical issues since the system relies on the internet to work, therefore, there's always glitches in the system. 
In general, they are faster than letters. Which is what appeals to some people. 
However, some facilities only have one way messaging, where you can email your message and your pen pal has to snail mail their reply. It depends on which prison and what level of security they are. 

I have also never used the WAP email feature, but from accounts from people on here, they seem to take an age to get to their recipients. Like mentioned before (and elsewhere on the site and forum) they send them twice a month. So your letter could sit for up to two weeks before being sent. But it's free. 
It's only allowed for one inmate, you can't send multiple emails off of WAP, and it's limited to one a month across the whole site. So if you're wanting to contact multiple pen pals then you have to choose another way to contact them. 
If your patience is Zen Master level, go with the WAP email for your intial contact. 
 

There's no "one size fits all" for how you want to contact your pen pals in prisoner. It's up to your preferences and your means and what fits best into your life style. Do you want to send messages once a day, sometimes more? JPay/Corrlinks might be for you. Do you want to write once a month? Or every two weeks? Then snail mail might be for you. Don't want to give out your address? Emails the way! (Or Jmail, but that's a whole other conversation, or a P.O. box could be a go!) Want to help out the USPS (which is struggling due to COVID) then get a pen and start writing! 

So many options!