Guide to writing letters to incarcerated survivors

Currently & formerly incarcerated survivors have stated again and again how important letters of support are to their well-being. Letters are also important strategies to build relationships and organizing coalitions across prison walls. Here’s a basic guide for how to send letters to incarcerated people. This document is adapted from a prisoner letter-writing guide created by the California Coalition for Women Prisoners. Thank you CCWP!

Now Available: Letter Writing Action Center

S&P’s Letter Writing Action Center includes tips for best practices for writing to incarcerated survivors, tips for organizing letter-writing gatherings, and dozens of addresses of incarcerated survivors who welcome your support.

Goals of letter-writing to incarcerated survivors:

Strengthen our connection to criminalized survivors and collectively resist their disappearance;
Strengthen and guide the anti-violence movement by gathering and sharing information on how survival is criminalized;
Respect and promote the leadership of incarcerated survivors by responding to requests for information and by asking for their input in all matters of their survival and release;
Connect incarcerated survivors with information, resources and support;
Monitor and resist abusive prison conditions;
Inform us of upcoming release possibilities for incarcerated survivors, including parole hearings and commutation processes, so that we can advocate with survivors for their release;
Resist the isolation that incarceration of all forms creates, paying particular attention to how incarcerated women and transgender people disproportionately suffer the loss of outside support systems;
Express our solidarity with incarcerated survivors.

Values that guide our communication with incarcerated survivors:

CCWP considers correspondence with incarcerated women to be a critical part of building a movement to free women from prison.
We work in solidarity with incarcerated women. Solidarity is defined by Sharon Martinas as “an act of bonding with people struggling for their liberation.”
We offer non-judgmental support from a social justice, prisoner/survivor empowerment perspective.
We encourage responses that offer validation, support, and encouragement;
We believe that incarcerated women are the experts in their own lives – those of us who haven’t been there are not the experts.
We recognize that the violence and control used by prison staff and prison policies against women and transgender people in prison mirror the abuse that many may have experienced from their abusive partners (this means that CCWP does not consider acts of abuse by prison staff as isolated acts, but instead they are a part of a system designed to control and oppress people in prison, especially people of color, immigrants, and poor people).
We are in solidarity with and support the rights of all people in prison and formerly incarcerated people. We do not support “divide and conquer” strategies used by the prison or other groups that try to frame survivors of domestic violence (or people serving sentences for non-violent crimes, or other categories of people) as “good” prisoners in comparison with “other” prisoners who are “bad” prisoners or ones who “deserve” to be incarcerated

Other things to consider when writing incarcerated survivors:

Please be aware of the scarcity of resources for incarcerated survivors and the power differential that creates — do not make commitments or promises that you cannot keep.
Please keep in mind the mixed literacy levels among incarcerated people and try to respond appropriately — ask questions to help assess what the survivor needs and what is the most accessible way for them to receive support.
Remember that letters will be opened by prison staff — ask survivors to let you know what they are comfortable sharing and discussing by mail.
Please be aware of prison rules for mail sent to incarcerated people. For example, California Dept of Corrections mailing procedures can be found here.

Art by Bria Royal