Australia's National
Prison Newspaper

Australia's National
Prison Newspaper

ISSUE NO. 8

March 2025

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Letters

About Time for a Pen Pal Program

By

Rachel

Rachel writes from Numinbah Correctional Centre in Queensland.

Khara Woods on Unsplash

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Hi About Time Team,

Wow, I won the caption comp for December… I’ve never won anything and the whole jail is congratulating me.

Our jail was never told about your newspaper – but in November 2023 it just showed up and all 120 girls at NCC love it. So please, please keep it up.

It’s interesting to see what other jails and other states are doing and it’s very interesting to see the differences we all have, like phone costs, buy up items and even what we pay to have our TVs. For example, Adelaide jails pay $11 per year but QLD it’s $2 per week.

Thank you for the write up on pen pal programs – I’ve been in jail for four and a half years and always watch a show called Love After Lockup based on the USA pen pal project.

After watching this show I asked my Aunty to sign me up for an Australian pen pal prison program – but she told me that there wasn’t any. I’ve only got one year left to go and when I get out, I really want to work and advocate for Queensland prisoners and I am going to try again to start up an Australian pen pal program. Every person incarcerated or not should have the opportunity to write. Maybe the jails themselves could or should monitor outgoing mail better instead of just banning beneficial pen pal programs altogether.

Anyway guys, thank you for your newspaper. We eagerly await it every month here at Numinbah CC.

Sincerely,

Rachel

Hi About Time Team,

Wow, I won the caption comp for December… I’ve never won anything and the whole jail is congratulating me.

Our jail was never told about your newspaper – but in November 2023 it just showed up and all 120 girls at NCC love it. So please, please keep it up.

It’s interesting to see what other jails and other states are doing and it’s very interesting to see the differences we all have, like phone costs, buy up items and even what we pay to have our TVs. For example, Adelaide jails pay $11 per year but QLD it’s $2 per week.

Thank you for the write up on pen pal programs – I’ve been in jail for four and a half years and always watch a show called Love After Lockup based on the USA pen pal project.

After watching this show I asked my Aunty to sign me up for an Australian pen pal prison program – but she told me that there wasn’t any. I’ve only got one year left to go and when I get out, I really want to work and advocate for Queensland prisoners and I am going to try again to start up an Australian pen pal program. Every person incarcerated or not should have the opportunity to write. Maybe the jails themselves could or should monitor outgoing mail better instead of just banning beneficial pen pal programs altogether.

Anyway guys, thank you for your newspaper. We eagerly await it every month here at Numinbah CC.

Sincerely,

Rachel

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