What is a Pen Pack? Joint Effort has been responding to a prisoner initiated call for much needed parcels of necessities such as individualized clothing, personal items and small accessories (clock radios, fans, tv’s…) to be sent, by request, to folx beginning their federal sentences at FVI. Since the prison only provides standardized uniforms and limited personal items and necessities, these parcels, called ‘pen packs’, are vital to a new prisoners’ survival in the institution. Fellow prisoners are not allowed to give anyone else clothes or any items for that matter. Family or friends are allowed to provide a limited amount of clothing, personal grooming items and electronics within 30 days of someone arriving at a Federal prison. If prisoners at Fraser Valley Institution (FVI) for Women don’t have friends or family who can do this or whose friends and family don’t have the financial resources to put this together for them, the prisoners themselves can contact Joint Effort to put a Pen Pack together. We get input from the people requesting the Pen Pack about the items they would like, the sizes, styles and colours, so that the items they receive can be a personal acknowledgement of their individuality and needs. We try to get the majority of clothing from community donations, but the personal grooming items and some of the electronic items have to be obtained new. We put together usually around 10 Pen Packs a year, depending on the demand. Pen Packs help a person to maintain their sense of individuality, selfhood, dignity and agency when facing institutionalization.
Pen Packs mean a lot to the folx inside, because having clothing suit your personal taste and not having to wear prison sweat suits for your entire sentence means a lesser degree of institutionalization and a greater degree of dignity and self-expression. This is particularly important for trans-women who may experience misgendering, with most probably having experienced gender policing in the process of their criminalization. It is also significant for Indigenous women who are being retraumatized after the institutionalization and assimilation of surviving Residential schools either directly or intergenerationally, and for everyone who is stripped of their identity once criminalized in and by this system.
During COVID, the institution will only accept Pen Packs sent by courier, which adds to the cost. Our project is not only to be able to get people Pen Packs on time during a pandemic and alter the material and economic support that prisoners have, but also to document how this support is carried out, so other groups can do this kind of support across this so-called country.
We recognize that people inside need the support of the community in overcoming the injustices of our prison system. We look to a vision of how societies lived on these lands for thousands of years without prisons, and how we will one day not put people behind bars and instead keep the most vulnerable at the centre of our circles.
Collective Economy. Pen Packs /Out Packs also benefit the community within and across prison boundaries. They are a part of creating a collective economy where everyone benefits from sharing, along the lines of “tend and friend” (an alternate way to look at trauma response – a way to approach trauma as it’s unfolding). As prison takes away our emotional economy it hurts everyone in the prison to see people going without and not be able to help. The goals of organizing pen packs are to maintain interdependent community connection and get the wedge of self-determination through the doors of the system. Community connection can chip away at isolation, especially when people are recognized for who they define themselves to be. Self-determination allows people to connect intellectually, emotionally, collectively, and sometimes spiritually with others. Ongoing communication with community members means people have a wider circle of support when they get out and they can sometimes get out sooner. Sending in Pen Packs is one of a few ways we show that people on the outside know that people inside are there, that we are bearing witness as much as we can to their situation, and that we are here to support them.
Making a maximum of $6/day in prison and paying often double the cost of things compared to the outside, it would take someone 4 to 8 months of work to pay the cost of the Pen Pack inside prison. As well, by not being able to share, donate or lend anything to the person next to you, co-operative economics that all communities operate with are undermined. It is healing for everyone when someone gets a Pen Pack. Compassion and empathy are part of the local economy of a prison community and connecting with community on the outside is part of expanding social enterprises. It is all not-for-profit and out of a spirit of survivorship, solidarity and justice to want basic needs met for the person next to you.
What is an Out Pack? Likewise, when leaving, Joint Effort provides ‘Out Packs’. These consist of requested items that a person leaving prison needs to establish their lives, such as clothing for work, shoes, small accessories (lamps, towels, shampoo …) and so forth. Beyond the items provided, Pen/Out Packs show that a person going in or coming out of prison is not alone and that there are people who want to connect with and support and care deeply about the institutional violence of the prison system that they are in.
Organizations that Contribute to Pen/Out Packs. We communicate with the Inmate Committee to centre this project on the principles of mutual aid, community connection, and self-determination. We seek to be allies to prisoners and hold ourselves responsible to learning and expanding our understanding of how to listen to, attend to, and act on the needs of the people we are in allyship with. We acknowledge the benefit it has to us personally and as a community to have connection with community members who have been taken from us.
We connect to and receive clothing donations from the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre clothing room, and Miscellany Social Enterprise Thrift Store. We get additional donations from the Queer Exchange and other community members. We are part of the Prison Justice Network who have provided donations, the Prison Justice Day Committee, Books 2 Prisoners, Defund 604 Network, and other abolition and defunding coalitions. We also are connected to LINC Society (Long-term Inmates Now in Community), an organization of former prisoners and their families who provide support for prisoners and people coming out of prison. They provide televisions that fit the regulations of the prison and deliver them to the prisoner for a cost of $130. We also have connected with the Jail Accountability and Information whose group does Pen Packs out of Ottawa for prisoners incarcerated in Ontario and Saskatchewan, Manitoba, via the Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta Abolition Coalition’s (SMAAC) Prairie Province Prisoner Support Fund.
Our Pen-Pack and Out-Pack project is supported by Freedonia who have granted us funds in 2021 and 2022.
How to get a Pen Pack / Out Pack. If you are wanting a Pen Pack or Out Pack contact Joint Effort through the mailing address on our CONTACT page. Pen Pack/Out Pack forms that request information such as sizes and what items you would like are available to download here:
Pen Pack / Out Pack request form
If you want to contribute to a Pen Pack or Out Pack contact Joint Effort to ask about: item donations. Monetary donations can be mailed or e-transfered.
An entire Pen Pack cost $500
a tv costs around 120$
Pen packs cost 350$
shipping costs 20$
Personal items costs $40
Clothing costs $300
Our Pen-Pack and Out-Pack project is supported by Freedonia
Joint Effort Collective 