Hello,

I own a website, and we help about 7,000 inmates a year find friends, legal aid, emplyment upon release, etc. As you can imagine, prison can be pretty boring and pretty scary. Idle inmates tend to get in more trouble than those who have something to do and something to look forward to. That is the reason I'm here.

We currently provide a section for friends and family of inmates to generate custom word searches, crossword puzzles, etc., but we want to provide more. I started reading up on Correspondence Chess, and this seems like something that we could adapt for the website. I am wondering if any of you might have some other suggestions on PBM games for inmates? The biggest challenge is keeping the content (inmates don't have Internet) very limited because of prison rules. You can only send so many sheets of paper at a time.

Anyway, I'm new to PBM games. Any help on where I can find actual CC forms, etc. would be most appreciated. Any ideas are welcome to.

Thank you!
Adam Lovell

Have you tried Google ?

Thanks! I did try that, but I hit a dead end with the people I found. We do have some puzzle generators going on the site now, but I was hopeful that we could get some simple correspondence chess formula or others for the inmates and their families.

I used to be a member of the BCCA (British Correspondence Chess Association) and I believe they had a few people being detained at ‘Her Majesty’s Pleasure’ on their list of members – the main problem is, in order to play CC you have to give your address out, and I know I wouldn’t have been too keen on letting an inmate at Strangeways know where I lived – he might decide to pay you a little visit if he ever gets out… unexpectedly

Hrm, what's wrong with doing it over e-mail or some site?

Yeah, fair point!

inmates don't have internet

Visitors do.

I played postal chess with the CCLA for years and played a lot of inmates. In fact the last one I played got paroled in the middle of our game. I never had one show up at my door but then I was always polite and never discussed anything but chess.

I should think in this day and age inmates will have limited access to the net too but maybe only once a week or something, which is why they may be more inclined to play by mail.