Ameelio Mail: Photos to Prison - Free photos & letters

Do you have a family member in prison in the US? Uplift their mood by sharing your life experiences with them through photos and letters.

Why you’ll appreciate it

• Sending photos and letters is completely free for those who need assistance—simply inform us within the app

• Save both time and money—as we will handle the printing and mailing process for you

• Our quality printing ensures that your loved one will treasure what they receive

What is Ameelio?

Ameelio operates as a nonprofit organization, dedicated to ensuring that maintaining connections with your loved ones doesn’t become a financial strain. We aim to facilitate connections during difficult times in their lives.

We're focused on making communications affordable for all families—anyone in need can send free mail. Those looking to support free mailing for others can do so by purchasing unique gifts intended for their loved ones. All proceeds from these purchases go directly towards sustaining our free services.

What users think about Ameelio

“This is the most amazing blessing I could have received.” —Shari

“It has been fantastic. My loved one was thrilled to receive some extra attention from his letter.” —Telle

“It is incredibly beneficial for family members to maintain communication, especially during these challenging times.” —Trish

About Ameelio

Ameelio is a technology nonprofit that builds software to combat mass incarceration. We’re disrupting the $3 billion predatory prison communications industry to create a more humane and rehabilitative corrections system for the over 2 million people incarcerated and their 27M loved ones. Our tools are built to power broadscale decarceration.

The problem

Nearly 1 in 2 Americans have an immediate family member who 
is currently or has previously been incarcerated. 1 in 4 American adults has had a sibling incarcerated. 1 in 5 has had a parent sent to jail or prison, and 1 in 8 has had a child incarcerated.

The footprint of mass incarceration is staggering. And worse yet, predatory prison companies backed by private equity and hedge funds have been exploiting this crisis and millions of Americans for decades.

Our story

Ameelio was launched at the height of the COVID-19 Pandemic. Two Yale students, Uzoma "Zo" Orchingwa and Gabe Saruhashi saw the effects that family separation and isolation had on incarcerated individuals and their families. Zo and Gabe went on to launch the first and only nonprofit provider of incarcerated persons communication services (IPCS). They envisioned Ameelio as an ecosystem of technology that enables loved ones to communicate with their incarcerated family members, and as a powerful advocate taking on the billion-dollar IPCS industry, dominated by two exploitative companies.

We are a team of technologists, advocates, designers, lawyers, and engineers who are committed to fundamentally transforming the correctional system for the better. At the core of our work is an understanding that poverty is a key driver of mass incarceration. 50% of prisoners have no earnings in the eight years leading up to their incarceration. In the year immediately preceding the imprisonment, that percentage jumps to 80%.

We are and will always strive to be one of the boldest and most innovative approaches to criminal justice reform, not only because of our ability to build powerful technology to tackle the most challenging problems in the space but also because our tools are informed by the profound understanding that sustainable decarceration is only possible if we provide the incarcerated with the vital resources and pathways that they lacked prior to incarceration (i.e. educational equity, economic mobility, societal support, and more).

Technology is rapidly transforming the world around us; we intend to use it to solve one of society’s greatest social crises — mass incarceration.

The Predatory Prison Communications Industry

Decades of research show that sustained family contact dramatically improves post-release outcomes and significantly reduces recidivism.

Mass incarceration costs taxpayers $182 billion a year. It costs millions of families everything they have. Two predatory prison telecom companies generate obscene profits by charging extortionate prices to the incarcerated and their loved-ones simply to maintain contact.

Families spend up to $500/month just to stay connected with incarcerated loved ones. A 15-minute phone call runs as steep as $25, and an email costs $1.50. This drives 1 in 3 families into debt and keeps recidivism rates at staggering levels (55 percent within 3 years).

Crisis &  Opportunity on the Horizon for Prison Education

Access to education while incarcerated is extremely limited. 64% percent of incarcerated individuals in state and federal prisons are academically qualified for postsecondary prison education programs, yet only 9% of incarcerated individuals completed college courses while in prison. Of the 960,000 incarcerated individuals eligible for college, only 86,400 will leave prison having completed a college course, let alone graduate.