At present around 3000 men and 45 women reside on Death Row in the US. The average period before execution is about seven years; many prisoners have been there for ten or more years. Almost invariably the prisoners are from poor backgrounds, have suffered abuse in childhood and have received bad legal representation. Many are black, a considerable proportion are mentally retarded and a large number were juveniles at the time of the crime. The conditions in which they are held are harsh and dehumanising. Many are abandoned by their family and friends and have very little, if any, contact with the outside world. Consequently, letters can be a very real "lifeline" to them.
LifeLines supports and befriends prisoners on Death Row in the United States, especially through letter writing. It was set up in 1988 in Cambridge, UK and has since spread both nationally and to a number of other countries, notably Ireland and The Netherlands. LifeLines' membership has now reached the point where it is possible to supply a pen friend for every prisoner on Death Row who wants one. Increasing numbers of prisoners now write to more than one person in Britain. Membership costs £18.00 a year (£6.00 unwaged). Overseas membership costs £20.00 ($30.00 US). Associate Membership is £8.00 (£4.00 unwaged). To write to a prisoner, it is necessary to join LifeLines. At present there is a waiting list of prisoners, so it should not take long before LifeLines can offer you the name of a prisoner to write to. Although the emphasis is very much on the individual relationship between pen friend and prisoner, and there is no obligation to play an active part in the organisation, many letter-writers feel somewhat isolated to begin with and value contact with others to share the difficulties and rewards of the correspondence. They do this through the LifeLines conferences, the quarterly newsletter and the regional groups that have been set up for this purpose, e.g. in the West Midlands, London and Merseyside.
The organisation is run on a State basis, with a system of co-ordinators. The co-ordinators send new letter writers the name of a prisoner and provide help with practical matters. The co-ordinator can advise on what to do if the prisoner stops writing, how to send money, what sort of things may be sent, or how to go about visiting a prisoner.
LifeLines is not a political group. Although they support one another if an execution is imminent, and lobby influential people in the State concerned, our main aim is to correspond with the prisoners and they are not actively involved in campaigning. Newsletter LifeLines puts out a quarterly newsletter called The Wing of Friendship. It contains articles by letter-writers and prisoners as well as information on the organisation and activities such as conferences.
National one-day meetings are held twice a year, in London in the autumn and elsewhere in the country in the spring. Speakers, who are usually actively involved with death penalty work in the US, have included Clive Stafford Smith, a British lawyer based in Louisiana, Sister Helen Prejean (author of Dead Man Walking), and Paul Hamann, the director and producer of the outstanding 1987 BBC documentary, Fourteen Days In May, which led to the first letters to Death Row prisoners - and ultimately to LifeLines.
In the light of experience to date, Lifelines know that people aged seventeen and under - especially girls - can find themselves in a very vulnerable position. It is fair to neither pen friend nor prisoner. Letter writers must be at least eighteen, therefore, and have their parents consent if still at school.
The Andrew Lee Jones Fund supports LifeLiners who study law in the US with a view to becoming Death Row lawyers.
Welcome To Hell is a collection of extracts from prisoners letters edited by the founder of LifeLines, Jan Arriens, which was published in November 1991 (Ian Faulkner Publishing Ltd., £9.95). Apart from providing a compelling portrait of Death Row as seen through the eyes of the prisoners themselves, the book provides a powerful insight into the work of LifeLines and an appendix with advice for those interested in writing to inmates on Death Row. An American edition is being published by Northeastern University Press.
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