Saturday, March 30, 2024

An Inside Job: The Network Creating Community With Prison Pen Pals

Like many people, Emma Clifton first discovered the Prisoner Correspondence Network during the pandemic and has made a great prison pen pal since. She talks to a PCN co-ordinator about why the community is so important and can help with the rehabilitation of those on the inside.

Years ago for a NEXT story, I spent the day at Wiri women’s prison in Auckland and it cemented three things for me: 1) I would not do well in prison, 2) the difference between me and the women inside, for the most part, came down to things completely outside of our control and 3) it seemed very, very lonely.

The work of the Prisoner Correspondence Network (PCN) aims to create a community through the power of pen pals, which sounds extremely 1990s Babysitter’s Club and yet is a powerful way of helping ease the loneliness problem that faces those on the inside. PCN started in early 2016, as a pen pal network for LGBTIQ prisoners.

‘That we treat incarcerated people as irredeemable is reflected in our high recidivism rates.’

PCN is a project run by the prison abolitionist organisation People Against Prisons Aotearoa (PAPA). Since 2016, PCN has grown from just a handful of transgender women and gay men, to hundreds of people across the prison system and has grown in numbers (on both sides) during the pandemic.

It is a very safe process – the PCN has a range of bios from male prisoners, you pick one or more to chat to, you write them a letter online, which is sent into the prison as an email, printed out and given to them. They handwrite you a letter back, which is then collected and scanned by a volunteer, and sent back to you. It goes through the PCN system to keep everyone’s details secure, and you don’t share identifiable details.  This allows for a safe way to communicate with someone who really, really needs a pal.

Here are some of the things I have discussed with my pen pal: weird things that cats do, our favourite flavour of chips, how they celebrate Christmas inside prison, his workout routine, being a nerd, favourite books and films, cars and more. He was one of the first people I talked to my pregnancy about, in those weird in-between months when you’re not sure who to discuss it with, and he wrote me a two-page letter about how much he loved being a dad and what a treat I was in for.

I appreciate that it’s easy to ready that paragraph and assume that I am a deeply naïve Pollyanna, but the truth is, I have interviewed a lot of people who have ended up experiencing extremely hard circumstances – prison time, addiction – and to reduce people to the worst thing they have ever done benefits absolutely no-one.

When you take away people’s humanity and ability to connect with society, you do not improve their chances of rehabilitation – rather, you ensure the impossibility of it. And for many inside prison, there have been limited – or non-existent – visiting opportunities since the pandemic began. That is a long few years for a lot of people. I spoke to Courtney, a full-time gardener and a volunteer co-ordinator for the PCN since 2018, about why this community is so important and the long-lasting impacts it has on those inside.

Why is the PCN so important for people on the inside?

Serving a prison sentence can be an incredibly lonely and scary experience. No matter what harm you may have done, losing access to your home, your whānau, your community and to many of the things that make life worth living takes a heavy and lasting toll on a person’s spirit. PCN’s kaupapa is centred around alleviating some of the social harm that prisons foster by keeping incarcerated people connected with communities on the outside through letter writing.

‘PCN believes that every person, no matter their situation, is worthy of basic human connection.’

For the incarcerated people who use our network, it allows them to form and maintain friendships with people from all walks of life, who are interested in them as people and who see them as worthy of connection despite their situation. This can be especially important to people who are serving long sentences, who often do not have regular contact with anyone on the outside.

We get lots of really moving letters from our incarcerated pen pals letting us know that receiving letters has brought them comfort, made them feel human, and that they haven’t been forgotten. Knowing that there are people on the outside who haven’t given up on them helps incarcerated people to envision a life on the outside that is worth returning to, and to feel their own value as human beings.

Why is it so important to remember the humanity in those inside?

We unfortunately belong to a culture in which the acceptable answer to a person committing harm is to send that person away to a place where they are out of sight – where we don’t need to really look at what they have done, think about what set them on the path they took, how they might work towards reconciliation, or what their return to their community might look like.

‘The isolation of being incarcerated is deeply damaging to the human spirit – and it can take as little as a few kind words from a stranger to help fight back against loneliness and despair.’

Prisons are, by design, deeply isolating places. The stigma of incarceration is carried with a person even after their release, affecting housing, employment, travel, and relationships, and that we treat incarcerated people as irredeemable is reflected in our high recidivism rates.

Imagine how it would feel to lose (in some cases forever) your home, your job, your whānau and community, and to face a future where people only see you for the worst things you have done. Many of us are closer to this reality than we might believe possible – it can take only one mistake or bad decision to change the course of our lives drastically. The isolation of being incarcerated is deeply damaging to the human spirit – and it can take as little as a few kind words from a stranger to help fight back against loneliness and despair.

PCN believes that every person, no matter their situation, is worthy of basic human connection. Regardless of what a person is incarcerated for, they are still ultimately a human being going through a terrible experience, and to extend them compassion is a powerful act.

What are some of the success stories or most memorable friendships that have formed out of the PCN?

To date, PCN has facilitated over 7000 unique pen pal connections between free and incarcerated people, with almost 43,000 pieces of correspondence sent. We have a handful of pen pals who have been with us since the beginning, and who have written to incarcerated people throughout their entire sentences. To me, these are some of the most important success stories – people on the outside who have been willing to give so much of their time to build these really strong and meaningful friendships over many years, which in some cases have continued even after the incarcerated pen pals were released.

We also get former prisoners who used the network during their sentences subsequently sign up to be pen pals themselves after they are released, which is such a cool thing to see. It’s a really clear testament to how much value people get out of the network – that they are keen to help other incarcerated people in the same way that they were helped during their incarceration.

Are there plans for a women’s chapter as well?

We are currently in the process of submitting and discussing proposals to the Directors of women’s prisons, trying to convince them to help us get the network established so that incarcerated wāhine get a chance to connect with pen pals too. The last time we attempted this was back in 2020 was unfortunately met with total silence from Corrections, which was really disappointing.

Because prison management has been historically unhelpful when it comes to distributing our information and application forms, PCN relies heavily on incarcerated pen pals spreading word of the network within their units. Unfortunately, the small handful of wāhine who have used our network have not done so, which has made it really hard to get a foothold in these prisons. I am hopeful that, with lots of persistence, this is the year that we will finally break through into women’s prisons.

What would you say to people who have read this and are now interested in being part of the PCN?

First of all, welcome! We are always so grateful to people who are willing to give their time and energy to writing to incarcerated people, and it means so much to our pen pals on the inside to know that strangers care enough to write to them.

You can sign up to our online system – all you need is your name and email address, and from there you will be able to see the personal introductions of all the incarcerated people currently waiting for a pen pal. If you have any questions or concerns before you write to someone new, you can email us at [email protected] and we will do our best to help!

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