How Becoming a Pen Pal Supports Incarcerated Populations
Book Riot, November 22, 2021: How Becoming a Pen Pal Supports Incarcerated Populations
“Literacy within prisons is incredibly difficult to achieve due to a lack of resources as well as severe restrictions on incarcerated people’s freedom to engage with books and educational material. The monotony and the complete failure to provide adequate resources, education, technology access, and other materials make it extremely difficult for people to successfully reenter society — and this perpetuates the prison-industrial system. It continues to prove that prisons are not useful in any rehabilitative way.
“Recently, a tweet by an organization named Abolition Apostles received a lot of attention. It was calling for pen pals for its program connecting imprisoned populations with the outside world. They have a long, long waitlist of people who want to make connections, and not enough people writing.”
Additional reading:
Pen America, November 15, 2021: Facing the Page: Pen America’s Prison Writing Program Takes on NaNoWriMo 2021
Jails to Jobs, August 3, 2021: Become a prison pen pal and offer light into darkness
