What return address should i use?

​We encourage non-incarcerated people to use their home mailing address. Here's why:

When you write someone who is incarcerated, you know exactly where they live. Sometimes addresses can be so specific you will know if they sleep on the upper or lower bunk. Using your own return address puts you on more even ground.

Importantly, not only do you know exactly where your pen-pal is, they cannot leave. In more than 15 years of writing incarcerated people, we have never heard of someone going to a person's house after release, or sending someone to a pen-pal's house. 

We encourage you to think about why you feel hesitant to share your address. For many, there is a root in the idea that incarcerated people are dangerous and untrustworthy. These ideas huge in US culture, and it's very normal to have absorbed them. As you write an incarcerated person, the walls created by that myth will break down.

If you are unhoused, your home address is not a safe place to receive mail from prison/jail, or have another reason you can't/don't want to use your return address, please contact us. We can let you use our return address if we know how to get mail to you.​