Welcome to Envelopes of Hope

[janneke]

It all began more then 6 years ago in December 2000. Like many others I'd never thought about people in prison.
I was writing Christmas cards and meanwhile I was reading in an ordinary ladies magazine and I saw a small request for sending a Christmas card to an inmate in a Thai prison who had to survive under very bad circumstances . So I just wrote that card and didn’t think about it anymore. I surely didn’t expect an answer at all, I was highly surprised when I picked up a letter from Thailand in my mailbox .. It was a reply from him in which he said thanks for the card and asked if I had the opportunity to keep in touch with him through letters. It wasn’t a prisoner on DR but someone with a life sentence for drugs trafficing . He was from Nigeria and after two years he went back to Nigeria because of a treaty Nigeria made with Thailand. He asked me to help a friend of his and become his penpal . This friend is still in Thailand and I got in touch with another two inmates in the same notorious prison Bangkwang. But sometimes I had some problems with sending stuff to them, Thailand is very corrupt, also in prison, nothing is allowed but with money everything is possible and I learned about a forum that existed . On this forum there were people who were also corresponding with prisoners. So I joined this forum and here I learned also about people on deathrow .There were requests on the forum for new pen pals for people on DR but it scared me off a bit in the beginning and I didn’t know if I was able to write with them. I didn’t know anything about the circumstances in American Prisons and the law system in America, so I wanted to learn about it first . I read several books and I was shocked about the circumstances the prisoners described in these books. These things happening in a country like America . I watched movies like "Dead Man Walking" , a true story made about the book written by Sister Helen Prejean and there was so much injustice in my opinion. I know these prisoners took someone's life and we must never underestimate that fact but time also learned that behind almost every crime is a long sad story, abuse in their childhood for instance and sometimes the crime took place under influence of drugs and alcohol. Besides, behind every crime is still a human being with an unwritten story who has the right to be treated humanely in prison and have friendships and support from the outside. Life without parole ( LWOP ) for severe crimes is a very heavy punishment like we have in Europe . Besides there are still innocent people on DR, people who never got a fair trial, innocent people that still will be executed . So I started writing to inmates on deathrow or inmates serving LWOP .I came to the conclusion that they are just like all of us, something bad happened in their life and they can never turn the clock back and have to find a way with these facts , just like we also made faults in life that we regret so much ……and suppose there was no help or forgiveness at all …..

[janneke]