Pen letters for prisoners: it’s the write thing to do

Having a pen pal is vital for the wellbeing of prisoners according to a research conducted by Professor Jacqueline Hodgson and PhD student Juliet Horne, from the School of Law at Warwick University.

The research was conducted around the work of Prisoners’ Penfriends, a charitable organisation that trains and assigns volunteer pen pals to prisoners in 52 institutions across England and Wales.

According to the research, life in prison can be incredibly lonely and depressing, with exceedingly high suicide rates.

Having a pen pal has proved to help inmates feel less isolated, more hopeful for the future and motivated to change their self-identity. As a consequence, prisoners are better equipped for re-integration into society upon release.

Most participants are women over 50 Photo: Simplificamos Su Trabajo / Flickr

“I am encouraged by my penfriend to think about the future and to make plans. I am also aware now that my sentence will one day end and a new life is waiting for me outside. My penfriend has helped a lot with this,” revealed one participant.

Essentially, the pen pal scheme provides prisoners with a link to the outside world, making it seem less daunting and encouraging them to seek release.

One volunteer expressed her desire “to make the world more familiar” to her prisoner pen pal.

According to professor Hodgson, the work of this organisation is vital: “There is so little rehabilitation in prisons that schemes such as this, which our study shows to be highly valued by prisoners, offer a win-win situation for all those involved at very little financial cost.”

Indeed, both prisoners and volunteers expressed feelings of enjoyment and satisfaction in writing and receiving letters from their pen pals.

The study showed that prisoner pen pals tend to be males, serving long sentences, and experiencing little or no contact with the outside world. The volunteers come from a wide variety of backgrounds, but are typically women over the age of 50.