Write to Someone in Prison

If you want to become a pen pal with a prisoner, organisations like Prison Fellowship (Letter Link) and the Hardman Trust (Penfriends) run supervised letter writing programmes that match volunteers with prisoners. PostRight can be used to send your letters once you have been matched.

Yes. PostRight can send letters to any HMP prison in England and Wales. You provide the prisoner's name and prison and PostRight looks up the address and handles the rest. Letters must comply with prison rules including no items enclosed, standard A4 paper, and the prisoner's name and number on the envelope.

Most letters sent to and from prison are checked by prison staff for security purposes. Exceptions include correspondence from solicitors and legal advisers. Your letter should not include anything that could be considered a security concern.

Order before 2.30pm UK time on a working day and your letter is printed and dispatched the same day. Orders placed after 2.30pm, at weekends, or on bank holidays are dispatched the next working day. Royal Mail delivery typically takes one to three working days from dispatch. Once at the prison, letters go through security checks before being distributed, which can add another one to two days. Allow approximately one week from ordering to receipt.

You should not include anything that could be considered a security risk, references to illegal activity, coded language, or anything that could be read as encouraging escape or disruption. Cash, stamps, stickers, and other items cannot be enclosed. PostRight prints on plain white A4 paper which is accepted by all prisons.

PostRight does not read, store, or share the content of your letter beyond what is required to print and post it. Once your letter leaves our fulfilment partner, it is handled as standard Royal Mail correspondence. Note that prison staff may read incoming mail as part of standard security procedures.