Writeaprisoner.com Review: WriteAPrisoner.com is a Florida-based online company that seeks to minimize recurrence through a variety of methods, including external positive correspondence, educational opportunities, work placement networks, resource guides, crime-affected children’s grants, and advocacy. The platform was initiated primarily as a place for profiles of prisoners and requests for legal assistance and built to discuss the complexities of the prisoner’s life in a more detailed way.
User Review
This self-help guide for prisoners written by Lovell is a helpful resource for both current and former prisoners as well as their support networks and families. It is Lovell’s expertise as a career counselor and human resources specialist that allows offenders to thrive in the face of hardship and successfully reintegrate into the community. In a time of great transition, Lovell offers encouragement and assistance on a variety of topics like writing a professional letter, keeping good health, and credit repair. The efforts of Lovell to minimize recidivism and alter lives are a bright spot in a world that tends to look the other way when it comes to those who are less fortunate than others.
This is not the worst of the many pages on the internet these days that ask you to write about convicts. To avoid being scammed, you just must be cautious about what you say and always keep it in mind that you may be duped out of money or even just for amusement.
In this community, you can meet new people and make new friends while sharing your faith. However, avoid being entangled in their drama. Males on execution row or serving life without parole are the subjects of my fiction. I won’t have to worry about them ever finding out, and they’ll know I’m just a penfriend who isn’t searching for a relationship.
I made the decision to acquire a personal copy of the self-help guide to go through before offering to purchase a copy for each of my penpals who had expressed interest. However, I did not find the “pre-sentencing” advice to be trustworthy, especially for individuals who do not have the luxury of time to get their affairs in order before their sentencing date.
A specialty website, WriteAPrisoner, allows people to interact with those who are incarcerated through the use of pen pals. Even though there is no official member’s area on this site, visitors can look up convicts in their state or by utilizing the search option, which allows them to narrow down their results by age, gender, ethnicity, or sexual orientation.
Lifers
Those on death row and individuals serving life sentences, as well as those who are eager to correspond with persons residing in other countries, can all be found via this service. The prisoner can receive books and vouchers, as well as letters and cards from a pen pal or sponsor, while in prison.
Because this is a very serious correspondence service, a detailed set of contact regulations must be adhered to at all times.
The site operates on a credit-based structure, with certain services (such as the creation and maintenance of a prisoner’s profile) being charged a price. An inmate’s presence on the site can be maintained by sponsors, pen-pals, or family members.
Daters’ Protection is a top priority at the company.
The use of this communication service is extremely serious, and it comes with an extensive set of contact rules and regulations that must be followed at all times. In order to protect people who seek to correspond with prisoners and to prevent convicts from exploiting this as a communication channel between themselves and others behind bars, these measures must be implemented in full.
About 17,000 inmates have their profiles on the website, with the majority being detained in the United States; however, the site also contains inmates from other countries. It has been referred to as the “MySpace and Facebook for inmates” by the media, despite the fact that it does not provide any type of Internet access to offenders.
Because the business is hosted online and includes convict profiles, it has been compared to social media; nonetheless, most agencies regard it as encouraging traditional pen-pal postal mail because the site does not give away for inmates to access the site from outside the prison walls online. It had approximately 10,000 hits each day by 2003 and featured biographies of prisoners from about a dozen different countries at the time of its creation. Inmates who use WriteAPrisoner.com are only able to communicate by postal letter with their families.
Inmates pay $50 each year to have their profile and photo posted on the website, which is accessible to the general public at no charge. Written communication with prisoners is encouraged through the site, which also offers a free e-mail forwarding service. Adam Lovell, author of SELF-HELP GUIDE FOR INMATES: Flourishing Through Adversity on WriteAPrisoner.com, serves as the company’s president and owner. Approximately 2 million page views per month were recorded on the site in 2010.
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld inmates’ ability to receive e-mail printouts from online pen-pals, ruling that the practice was constitutionally protected under the Constitution.
In addition, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit determined that inmates have a constitutional right to seek pen pals through the use of websites like Facebook. The American Civil Liberties Union successfully challenged an Arizona statute that prohibited inmates from creating profiles on WriteAPrisoner.com and similar websites.
WriteAPrisoner.com was specifically excluded from the bill when officials in South Carolina were debating legislation that would prohibit inmates from using social media sites such as Facebook. They cited WriteAPrisoner.com’s vetting process for inmates’ information and the fact that it does not provide a mechanism for inmates to communicate with their families over the Internet. While WriteAPrisoner.com does not let inmates communicate with one another via the Internet, many jails now offer services such as Corrlinks, which provides inmates with restricted email access in exchange for a small monthly fee.
State Departments of Corrections
According to the website, it intends to collaborate with state Departments of Corrections in order to ensure that convicts’ First Amendment rights are upheld. When it comes to inmate rights, the site has previously partnered with the ACLU and the Florida Justice Institute and has been represented by the Florida Justice Institute. A zero-tolerance policy is in place at the facility for both frauds performed by inmates and scams perpetrated against inmates, according to the site’s official statement.
After it was challenged in court by the ACLU, an Arizona statute banning prisoners from publishing profiles on WriteAPrisoner.com and the like was violated.
With a concern for legislation banning prisoners from using social media such as Facebook, officials in South Carolina claimed that WriteAPrisoner.com was exempt from the bill by referencing the internet communication system for prisoners and their usage of WriteAPrisoner.com’s vetting method.
