Pebble: prison pen pals

  (Featured in issue one of Pebble zine)

It’s an unusual friendship: a law student from Birmingham and a convict in California. “It’s strange how things are so simple in my life and yet everything’s so chaotic in his,” Kristy, 21, reflects. It’s less than three years ago since she first began writing to Miguel, held at Corcoran prison, San Francisco. 

 

Miguel often sketches pieces for Kristy and has even
designed her a tattoo

Curiosity struck, after she read an article about a woman who fell in love through a prison pen pal service. After he was released, the couple married and moved in together, but the romance was cut short after he refused to give up his other pen pal mistresses and she left him. “I wondered how anybody could be so attached to someone who had committed such a bad crime,” Kristy thought.

Eager to learn about life across the pond, she perused the endless list of inmates hoping for a friend
to write to. “I said I’d never write to anybody like a paedophile or a rapist. But I was really interested in writing to somebody from the mafia, having always been interested in them.” After sending out several letters Miguel replied with a brief handwritten note explaining the crimes he had committed, the structure to his day and his passion for art and tattooing. 

Miguel is locked 5,250 miles away in what the Los Angeles Times once described as ‘the most troubled
of the 32 state prisons’. Their most infamous resident, Charles Manson, now 77, still receives regular fan mail.
In the room that he shares with another ‘celly’ - as he refers to them - Miguel keeps photographs and letters sent by Kristy on a small bedside table. With minimal luxuries, his life sharply contrasts with the liberated existence of people on the outside.


Miguel - Spanish for Michael - is of Mexican descent, but was born in California. He is muscular in build, has short black hair, a moustache and dark eyes. His arms to his hands are laced with tattoos. 

"They knew he had a bad temper, and he’d react in a bad way"

“Certain tattoos he was given because of the certain crimes he committed, as that’s what they do in the mafia,” says Kristy. 

“I think he likes writing to me, because I don’t really know about his world, whereas the majority of his family have either been in prison, been part of gangs or in trouble with the law. 

“I’m not from the world he’s from; his area’s predominantly wrapped around crime and you have to be part of these gangs to survive.”

More recently, Miguel designed a tattoo for Kristy, having formerly owned a tattoo parlour before being imprisoned. “I told him that I was thinking about getting a tattoo, but I’d want a unique design, because I’d never get anything just for the sake of it, and he designed me a piece.” 

Kristy regularly receives sketches from her prison pen pal, who has a resonating passion for fine art. And in return, she sends him a letter at least once a month, giving him the companionship he’s deprived of.

As well as helping her to understand the American legal system for her dissertation, Miguel is currently studying law in prison with ambitions of getting into the profession once he’s granted his freedom.

After a while, you kind of forget about how you met, tells Kristy, “People always say, ‘Aren’t you worried because they’ve got your address?’ but then you think he’s got X amount of years in prison and I don’t see him as dangerous. You have this type of bond; a friendship.

“If I ever wanted to stop writing to him, I could tell him and he’d just stop, but I don’t think it would ever come to that.”

Kristy receives more correspondence from Miguel than his family. “I suppose I’m the impartial person in all of this; he can tell me something and I won’t pass judgement.”

Relationships give prison life normality, and sometimes instead of ink, love can flow from the tip of a pen. But being behind bars can constrain a pen pal relationship from forming into little more than a friendship. Miguel found out first- hand from briefly dating a woman on the outside. “She wanted him to have a phone-sex conversation while he was on a prison pay-phone, could you imagine it, with all the other prisoners there listening!” 

Meanwhile, back in Britain, Kristy’s been dating long-term partner Luke and has no intention of anything more than a platonic friendship. She says: “He sees me as being younger, and I see him as being older.
“He can kind of think of me as a young mind who he can talk to – he can watch me change and I watch him getting wiser and reforming.” 

Far from the sombre side of prison life, on the outside, Miguel was known to have a short fuse, often acting irrationally out of impulse and emotion. It was his tempestuous nature that led to him being arrested in 2006; Miguel kidnapped a man who had been stalking his sister.

He then stole a car with the driver still inside and drove to the desert. Once he’d got there, he gave the keys back to the owner, who drove off. He then threatened the stalker before leaving and was later caught by the police. “His family never told him [about the stalker] because they knew what he was like. They knew that he had a bad temper, and that he’d react in a bad way.” Miguel was only told about his sister’s obsessive ex after he showed up at her apartment.

Since returning to jail for the second time, Miguel’s trying to keep his head down and is mentoring younger prisoners. He has even transferred from a previous Californian jail to avoid the risk of tarnishing his record, which could push his release date further out of reach.

Under America’s Three Strikes Law, if Miguel is prosecuted again, he will be forced to serve a mandatory 25 years sentence, plus time for the crime he committed, meaning reformation and rehabilitation back into society are his only choices.

But with a further ten years to serve until he’s up for parole, regrets plague his mind: “He feels guilty about not being there for his daughter while she goes through school and his son who’s just about to go into prison.”

 "She wanted him to have a phone-sex conversation while he was on a prison pay-phone, could you imagine it"

Seeing past a person’s crime is essential while writing to someone in jail, having the empathy to understand that a criminal is not necessarily a bad person but someone who’s made a bad decision or action.

“It’s kind of like when you get a big crowd of people, they lose their individual identity. You just see them all as prisoners. But then, when you write to certain people, you get the idea that they’re not a bad person. [Take Miguel], he’s done this specific crime for certain motives. And you start to see them for who they are rather than the crimes they’ve committed. So the more you write to them and the more you hear about their life and family, you start to sympathise.” 

In the past few weeks, Kristy filled out a visiting form, so that one day she can meet face-to-face with her friend from afar. 

“He’s said our friendship has made him think about things in different ways, to make a change and want better things out of life.” 

Featured in Pebble zine