Send a letter
to a prisoner.

Mail sent into a prison is sorted by the mail room before it reaches the person it is for. That is why the envelope needs two things a normal letter does not: the recipient's full legal name and something that identifies which person that is — normally their prison number. A prison can hold hundreds of people, and more than one of them may share a name, so a name on its own is not enough to deliver on.

The prison number is on any letter they have sent you. If you do not have it, you can use their date of birth instead: most establishments will route on it. A number is the more reliable of the two, so use it if you can get it — ask them, or ask the prison directly.

The address goes in this order

• Their full name, followed by their prison number in brackets — or their date of birth, written as DOB DD/MM/YYYY
• The name of the prison, for example HMP Wandsworth
• The prison's street address
• The town and postcode

When you pick a prison on this page, we fill all of that in for you — the establishment's address comes from the prison service's own published details, not from something you have to type correctly under pressure.

What you can and cannot send

Rules differ between establishments, and each prison publishes its own. As a general rule, a printed letter on plain paper is accepted everywhere. Prisons routinely refuse anything with glitter, stickers, tape, perfume, or unusual paper stock, and many restrict printed photographs — so if you want to send photos, check that prison's rules first.

Letters into prison are usually opened and checked before being passed on. Legal correspondence is treated differently under rule 39 (or its equivalent in Scotland and Northern Ireland). Nothing on this page is a substitute for the individual prison's own guidance, which is published on its GOV.UK, Scottish Prison Service, or Department of Justice page.

Writing the letter itself

If you are not sure what to say, start with the ordinary. News from home, what the weather has been doing, what you have been cooking, how someone you both know is getting on. Letters into prison do not need to be momentous — being remembered is the point, and a short letter that arrives beats a long one you never finish.

Our editor opens with a structure already in place: your address, the date, their address, and prompts for the parts only you can write. You can delete all of it and start from scratch if you would rather.