Writing to political prisoners.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Does anyone have any experience with this, and if so, how paranoid should you be? (ie you probably shouldn't use your real name, or should you? It's of course known that mail often gets read by the authorities in prison, but I'm sure that a lot more scrutiny is put on some individuals).

[bcbm]

i dont think using your real name matters, because you have to put an address sooo theyll know who you are anyway. prison authorities do read stuff so dont say anything that could get you or the person you are writing in trouble. most sites with list of prisoners to write have good guides for this

[bad ideas actualised by alcohol]

It may be a stupid question, but why would you do this?

[Tim Cornelis]

Never mind, found it:

http://www.brightonabc.org.uk/texts/Leaflets/writing%20to%20prisoners%20-%20printable.pdf

Information that comes in handy.


It may be a stupid question, but why would you do this?

Solidarity. It's nice to hear people have not forgotten about you I suppose.

[bcbm]

It may be a stupid question, but why would you do this?

jail sucks and we shouldnt forget our brothers and sisters on the inside

[Os Cangaceiros]

i dont think using your real name matters, because you have to put an address sooo theyll know who you are anyway. prison authorities do read stuff so dont say anything that could get you or the person you are writing in trouble. most sites with list of prisoners to write have good guides for this

If I wouldn't use my real name, I'd probably have my return address be my "business address", which the authorities could still probably track back to me, but it would take some detective work...

I don't plan on writing about anything remotely illegal, though (I'm smarter than that at least), so I guess it doesn't matter. I'm probably just paranoid.

To Negative Creep: because prison fucking sucks and if I were in prison I'd sure as hell appreciate even the slightest sense that I wasn't completely forgotten about inside.

[MarxSchmarx]

I can only speak to developed countries, but as to your paranoia, depends on the prisoners country and your country. In most of the EU and Latin America you should be fine, nobody really cares unless the person you want to correspond with is quite infamous like that Peruvian shining path guy. The British isles are an important exception, there you are guaranteed to end up in a dossier if you write a political prisoner. Generally if you live in the UK/Ireland and write a prisoner outside the UK/Ireland it is fine. If the prisoner is in UK/Ireland I would be cautious in what you say, or correspond through an intermediary in a third country, preferably outside the EU or commonwealth.

The situation in North America is a little vaguer and depends on the prisoner and what they are charged with. The US in particular has a byzantine system of state and federal prisons with different rules. If you are in America and wish to correspond with an AMerican inmate, it is usually fine if the inmate is in the state system and there, as in EU and latin America, the situation is pretty lax as far as I know. In Japan you actually have to be on an approved list to correspond with prisoners, so for political prisoners this is quite difficult as correspondence is reserved for family and legal consel as well as old friends. If you are in Korea, Singapore, or Russia this is a real risk; it might be possible to correspond through a third party in the USA, however, and that is much more advisable.

It goes without saying that political prisoners in places like Indonesia, China, Saudi Arabia and Cuba likely will never receive your letter.