When I founded PenPals.Buzz last year, it was nothing short of a wonderful moment in my life. I remember day one quite well. My wife (whom I met on a pen pal website many years ago) helped me carry a several-hundred-pound desk up a flight of stairs, then helped build the rest of my office furniture. OK, I’ll be honest. She built all of it, while I stood there “supervising” and in awe of her abilities. Understanding IKEA directions was never one of my strong suits.
It feels so good to help inmates at a time when they need it most. At a time when most of their friends and family have forgotten them or written them off, I’m here to give them at least a small slice of hope and happiness. While many are locked up for life, and some of our members are even on death row, I strongly feel that no human, no matter their crime, deserves to be discarded, forgotten, and treated without a sliver of dignity. They’re already in prison as their punishment — we don’t need to punish them further by rubbing in their faces what “pieces of crap” they are.
I understand that many of you may have a sharply opposing viewpoint, and that’s perfectly understandable. I’m certain that those who have been victimized, or who have had friends or family members hurt by violent men and women, might feel that nobody in prison is deserving of a second chance. Your opinions are perfectly valid and understood. For now, though, let’s put aside our opinion and look at the evidence, the statistics, the facts. Research has shown that inmates who have at least one pen pal are six times less likely to reoffend once they’re released. Yes, you read that right — six times less likely to reoffend. And let me mention another stat: 90% of all prison and jail inmates will eventually be released.
If every inmate had a pen pal, it stands to reason that society would be a vastly better place in the long run. Millions of prisoners would be released, and year after year the crime rate would continue to decrease. While locked up, a pen pal can help inmates gain a sense of pride, self-esteem, and self-worth — deficiencies that likely caused them to offend in the first place. Sadly, only 2% of inmates in America have someone on the outside with whom they regularly communicate with. That means that of the 2 million inmates currently incarcerated in the United States, only 40,000 have a pen pal or friend on the outside. And over 1.9 million don’t.
The only sad thing, for me, when I started this business, was that it meant an end to my radio career. I worked for over 15 years as a radio personality at stations across the United States. My last job was at The Wolf, a country station in San Francisco, in 2007. I missed having a microphone and headphones. But that got me thinking — radio is pretty much dead these days, anyway. All the shows are pre-recorded, the programming is more boring than the nights in my teens when I was forced to watch Lawrence Welk with my grandfather. I began mulling over the idea of a Prison Pen Pal Podcast. At first, it seemed like there wouldn’t really be that much to talk about. But then I started writing notes down. And there was a lot. A whole lot.
I could re-live my dream of being “on the radio”, except instead of reading mundane weather reports and playing the same 14 songs repeatedly, I could actually do something that makes a difference. I could help educate people on all aspects of Prison Pen Pals. I could help people understand how wrong it is for many state corrections departments to ban inmates from having pen pals. A department with “correction” in their name is essentially telling society, “No, we don’t want our inmates to be six times less likely to reoffend when they get out — we want them to have nobody, no friends, no contact with the outside, and then when they get out, well…let’s worry about that later.” Then, there’s the horrible trend lately of prisons forcing all mail to go to a central processing facility, often thousands of miles away from the prison. Someone in Connecticut might want to send a birthday card to her son in New Jersey. The card must first go to Las Vegas, then it will get scanned into a system, and about three weeks later the inmate will not see the real card, but a black and white copy of it, or a digital image of it sent to their tablet. Isn’t that special. And even more pathetic is that prisons promote this as a “wonderful feature.”
We currently are in talks with various Departments of Correction in hopes of convincing them that pen pals are, in fact, a very valuable tool for rehabilitation. We also have pitched to them the terrible disservice they’re doing to their “residents” as they now call them, by not allowing actual mail to be delivered. Mail Call used to be one of the few joys that an inmate could look forward to. Now, in many places, even that is being taken away.
Our podcast will cover topics like: how to choose a pen pal; is it safe to write a violent criminal; what to write in your first letter; what makes a man or woman decide to write a prison inmate; and more. We’ll have interviews with current and former inmates, and their free world pen pals. We’ll talk to prison wardens and staff and hear their opinions on the topic. We’ll help people understand how to use JPay, Securus, Getting Out, and many other not-so-user-friendly apps and websites which are now becoming the standard way to email an inmate. Sure, it’s a bit cheaper than a postage stamp, but it is a total headache. My goal is to cover both sides. If people feel inmates manipulate them, or just use them to have money put on their books, we’ll discuss it with an open mind. We’ll talk about Love After Lockup and similar shows, and we’ll discuss how well they depict inmate relationships with free-world men and women. We’ll tell stories, some funny, some tragic.
The first episode can be heard below, and it’s not perfect by any means. I hadn’t used a microphone in over a decade, and I’m still learning all of the editing software. My voice was a bit hoarse. The first episode is too long — it’s supposed to be 30 minutes, and it’s closer to an hour. So don’t feel compelled to listen to it all in one sitting. My hope is that it will give people some new things to think about as they participate in the prison pen pal experience. Each Monday, we’ll release a new episode, and for the first few weeks, each episode will be slightly better than the last. I promise to get them down to 30 minutes, and I’ll do my best to keep them entertaining and informative. You can hear all of our podcasts here but can also find them on Amazon Music and Spotify. New episodes will be released each Monday.
Please share your feedback with us. We’d love to use your ideas for future episodes. And if anyone has strong feelings one way or another, and you’d be interested in being in a future episode, email us at podcast@penpals.buzz. We’ll respond to each and every one of you. And somewhere in the podcast, we mention a coupon code good for $5 off any new inmate pen pal profile. Just in case you’re interested 😉
If you celebrate, have a wonderful Easter. And thank you, sincerely, for being part of PenPals.Buzz.
