by Rick Fisk | Mar 10, 2016 | From the Inside
An excerpt of a letter from Rick in February of 2014, when he was still in county jail, and about six months before he was moved to prison. He writes about his idea to start Adopt an Inmate.
I feel as though I am the most well-taken-care-of inmate in Del Valle. Having friends and family who have professed faith in my innocence and pledged support through cards, letters and books is a blessing more valuable than can be conveyed or repaid. It has allowed me to maintain my sanity. Without these blessings I believe I would have fallen into a bottomless pit of despair. This belief and the eye-opening real-life stories revealed to me by fellow inmates drives me to make some difference here. Now and in the future. For a good while I have been contemplating a non-profit I have tentatively dubbed “Adopt-an-inmate.”
The organization would seek to provide the blessings I have received as well as other services possibly required for those caught up in the system without local resources to help them.
While I suspect it is by design, there is no solid proof of a conspiracy to deprive an inmate the means to defend himself. Conspiracy or not, a confluence of jail conditions can prevent the incarcerated from effectively participating in his own defense. It is this predicament that I’d most like to eradicate. Hope is a scarce commodity in jail. Those who provide it to us are God’s own angels.
by Melissa Bee | Jul 25, 2026 | From the Staff, Your Sunday Read
From August 7–10, volunteers will gather for our 10th Annual Volunteer Weekend – Bee Fest 2026.
Since our first Volunteer Weekend in 2017, these gatherings have given us a rare opportunity to work side by side, tackle major projects, strengthen our organization, and celebrate the people who make this work possible. This year is especially meaningful, not only because it marks a full decade, but because we will be gathering while our Director of Volunteer Operations, Leah, continues to recover from her injury and surgery.
To make the weekend possible, we urgently need help funding meals, project supplies, and, if our budget allows, small gifts of appreciation for the volunteers who are donating several days of their time.
Our fundraising goal is $1,000, and every contribution will directly help us care for the volunteers who show up to care for this mission. Whether you can give $10, $25, $50, or simply share the campaign, it will make a genuine difference.
Please help us make our 10th Annual Volunteer Weekend possible:
🐝 🐝 🐝 Bee a Supporter of Bee Fest 2026 🐝 🐝 🐝
Ten years of Volunteer Weekends means ten years of people showing up – not for recognition or reward, but because they believe that people impacted by incarceration deserve connection, dignity, and hope. We would love your help carrying that tradition into its second decade.
by Melissa Bee | Jul 24, 2026 | From the Inside, Interviews
A recent episode of 40 Minutes With 40 offers a frank conversation about addiction inside the Virginia Department of Corrections. Founder “Free” speaks with an incarcerated guest known as “Black” about the drugs circulating in prison, why people use them, and why punishment alone does so little to stop the crisis.
When Free asks what contributes most to drug use inside, Black’s answer is immediate:
“Lack of programming.”
He explains:
“We’re in a box, all day long.”
That simple statement captures something often missing from public conversations about prison drug use. People are confined for years – sometimes decades – with too little meaningful activity, inadequate mental-health care, few opportunities to grow, and no real escape from the noise, violence, grief and hopelessness around them.
As Black also reminds listeners:
“We got a bunch of good guys in here.”
People struggling with addiction are not disposable. They are not beyond help. And they are not made healthier by having every remaining source of hope taken from them.
Drugs have not disappeared with physical mail
Many prison systems have restricted or eliminated physical personal mail, replacing original letters with scanned copies or digital messages. These changes are frequently justified as efforts to stop contraband.
Yet people incarcerated in multiple states have told us that the availability of drugs has not declined – and in fact the crisis appears to have grown worse.
One of our contacts in a Florida prison described officers walking past people experiencing apparent overdoses. Kurtis, who is incarcerated in Illinois, has told us that there are sometimes as many as five deaths in a single week where he is, related to drugs.
These personal accounts do not establish exactly how every substance enters every prison. They do, however, challenge the idea that ordinary family letters are the primary cause of the drug crisis. When physical mail disappears but drugs remain plentiful, prisons must look honestly at other points of entry rather than continuing to burden families and sever meaningful connections.
Mail restrictions also carry a painful cost. A handwritten letter is often one of the few tangible reminders a person has that someone outside still sees, remembers and loves them. Removing that connection can deepen the very isolation and despair that make substance use more appealing.
Punishment is not treatment
The conversation also examines the correctional system’s most common response to drug use: punishment.
A person caught using drugs may receive a disciplinary charge, lose earned good time, be placed in segregation, lose privileges and face even more idle time. None of those consequences treats addiction. In many cases, they create additional hopelessness – and another reason to seek temporary relief from unbearable surroundings.
Black suggests beginning with these four words:
“Do you need help?”
Instead of immediately demanding identification and writing a charge that takes away a person’s good time, he proposes offering treatment first: access to a drug program, weekly counseling and meaningful mental-health support.
He suggests suspending the disciplinary consequence for six months while the person participates in treatment. Give them an opportunity to recover. If they refuse the help or continue using after that period, consequences may follow — but treatment and accountability should begin with a genuine chance to get well.
As Black explains, a person in active addiction is not thinking clearly. Simply punishing the behavior without treating what drives it sends that person directly back into the same circumstances, now with even less hope than before.
A better first response
Addiction does not stop being a health issue when the person suffering from it is incarcerated.
Prisons cannot punish people into recovery. They cannot eliminate addiction through isolation, deprivation and the removal of family contact. And they cannot credibly claim to value rehabilitation while leaving people confined in idleness and then disciplining them for the ways they attempt to escape it.
The first response does not have to be another charge.
It could be a question:
Do you need help?
Listen to the full conversation from 40 Minutes With 40 below, and subscribe to their channel to support more discussions led by people with direct experience of life inside prison.
by Melissa Bee | Jul 23, 2026 | From the Inside, From the Staff
This week, while processing a batch of older correspondence, we came across a letter from someone who had been part of Adopt an Inmate from our early days as an organization.
His name was Maurice.
As we routinely do when encountering older mail, we checked the agency locator where he was housed to confirm his location and custody status. Instead, we found Maurice listed as deceased.
Maurice had been incarcerated for decades. In the short biography he once shared with us, he described himself as a Vietnam-era Marine, an artist, a sculptor and a former interior designer and furniture builder. He had pursued extensive education while incarcerated. He also wrote that he had no family left outside after his eldest sister died during Hurricane Katrina.
Maurice sent us a handwritten note after being matched with an adopter:
“Adopt an Inmate: I love you. Thank you for ending my despair and years of loneliness. Yes! I have been contacted and adopted by one of your earth angels!”
The joy expressed in that handwritten note was real.
For someone who had spent nearly four decades in prison and believed he had no family remaining, being chosen by another person — even simply as a correspondent — meant that someone outside knew his name. Someone was expecting his letter. Someone had made a deliberate decision to see him as more than his conviction and identification number.
Now Maurice is gone.
Maurice died in federal custody on July 14, 2022. We do not know the circumstances of his death or who, if anyone, was able to claim his remains and mourn him in person.
It is difficult to contemplate how many people die behind prison walls after years or decades separated from family and community. Some are buried in prison cemeteries. In some such cemeteries, graves have historically been marked only with prison numbers rather than names. The sentence ends only because the person’s life has ended, and the institution that confined them becomes the last community to handle their body.
Whatever Maurice’s failures — and like every one of us, he had them — he was more than the worst thing he did and more than the number assigned to him.
He was a veteran.
An artist.
A craftsman.
A brother who mourned the sister he lost.
A man who received a letter that interrupted years of loneliness.
Maurice was here.
And today, we are saying his name.
by Melissa Bee | Jul 22, 2026 | Eric Burnham, From the Staff
For many years, Eric Burnham has shared his writing, insight, and lived experience with the Adopt an Inmate community. He is also a close friend of our board member Martin Lockett; the two men were incarcerated together many years and have remained close since Martin’s release in 2021.
Like Martin, Eric has used his years inside not simply to change his own life, but to help others change theirs.
While serving a life sentence in the Oregon Department of Corrections, Eric pursued an extraordinary path of education, reflection, service, and personal transformation. He earned his PhD, developed expertise in addiction counseling, trauma, emotional intelligence, and human behavior, and has written numerous posts for our website over the years.
He is the author of three books designed to help people understand themselves, heal from trauma and addiction, and build healthier relationships.
Emotional Intelligence Awareness: New Ways of Interacting After Trauma & Incarceration
Trauma and incarceration can profoundly affect the way a person interprets danger, manages emotions, communicates with others, and responds during conflict. Behaviors that once helped someone survive may later become barriers to connection, stability, and healthy relationships.
Eric helps readers begin recognizing how neurobiology, learned patterns, and automatic reactions influence their emotions and interactions.
The book offers a straightforward structure for exploring emotional regulation, self-awareness, communication, and relationship-building. It also includes references and resources for readers who wish to examine particular subjects more deeply.
Eric’s perspective is especially valuable because it was developed with the experiences of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people in mind. Rather than approaching them only through theories created at a distance, he brings together academic study, counseling principles, and an intimate understanding of the environments and experiences that shape people’s responses.
The result is a resource that can help readers better understand not only what they do, but why they do it—and how they can begin responding differently.
Emotional Intelligence Awareness – New Ways of Interacting After Trauma & Incarceration: A Facilitator’s Guide for Small Group Study
Eric’s follow-up book expands upon the original Emotional Intelligence Awareness by helping facilitators use its lessons in a small-group setting.
The guide includes notes, discussion support, and practical tools intended to help groups operate smoothly and create meaningful opportunities for growth.
Participants are invited to explore how trauma, neurobiology, learned behavior, and automatic emotional reactions affect their daily lives and relationships. With thoughtful facilitation, these conversations can help people practice greater self-awareness, improve emotional regulation, communicate more effectively, and develop healthier ways of navigating conflict.
This companion guide makes Eric’s work especially useful for peer-support programs, faith communities, correctional education programs, reentry organizations, counselors, and other groups working with people affected by trauma or incarceration.
Ascending from the Ashes of Addiction: A Christian Framework for Substance Use DIsorder Counseling
What if addiction is not just a disorder… but a signal?
A signal of something deeper — a fractured identity, a loss of purpose, a separation from the very source of life itself.
In Ascending from the Ashes of Addiction, Eric Burnham presents a groundbreaking framework that integrates modern counseling psychology with timeless biblical truth.
Rather than treating addiction as an isolated behavioral problem, this book reveals it to be a biopsychosocial-spiritual crisis—one that requires healing at every level of the human person: body, mind, relationships, and spirit.
Through a compelling blend of clinical insight and theological depth, Dr. Burnham guides readers toward:
- A restored understanding of identity rooted in the image of God
- Freedom from shame, anxiety, and compulsive self-destructive cycles
- A holistic model of recovery grounded in both science and Scripture
- Lasting transformation through grace, truth, and spiritual formation
This is more than recovery counseling.
This is redemption taking flight.
Education, Accountability, and Transformation
People sometimes speak about rehabilitation as though it were an abstract ideal. Eric’s life and work demonstrate what it can look like in practice.
It looks like taking responsibility.
It looks like years of difficult self-examination.
It looks like pursuing an education under circumstances that make every step more challenging.
It looks like transforming personal experience into tools that may help someone else avoid harm, recover from addiction, understand their trauma, or rebuild a damaged relationship.
It looks like becoming a source of guidance and healing from a place society often assumes has nothing of value to offer.
Eric has a hearing scheduled for September, when the Oregon Board of Parole will consider whether he may someday continue this work outside prison walls. We know that personal transformation does not automatically result in release, even after decades of growth and accomplishment. Parole decisions involve many factors, and the broader political climate can influence how society responds to even the strongest examples of rehabilitation.
Still, we remain hopeful.
Eric’s education, service, writing, and commitment to helping others cannot return the years that have passed or erase the harm that brought him to prison. They do, however, show who he has worked to become.
Whatever happens at his hearing, these books are part of Eric’s contribution—and evidence that a person’s capacity to grow, teach, serve, and create meaning does not end when a prison sentence begins.
We are proud to share his work.
by Melissa Bee | Jul 13, 2026 | Books, From the Staff
Sometimes the best ideas come unexpectedly.
Recently, one of our longtime Ai friendships inspired a new way for adopters and adoptees to connect: shared reading.
by Inmate Contributor | Jul 7, 2026 | From the Inside, Poetry From Prison
In this poem, Joshua reflects on the places, people, foods, faith, contradictions, and losses that shaped him. His words move between warmth and hardship — from cottonwood drifting like summer snow and fried okra to anger, solitude, and memories of lives ended too soon.
I am from….
I am from an open oven to keep us warm,
From Marlboros and flyswatters.
I am from the projects, small and comfy, and smelling soggy.
I am from the cottonwood, flowing in the breeze like summer snow.
I am from BBQ’s and solitude.
From Ruth and Dan.
I am from anger and bitterness.
From you’re just like your dad and this hurts me more than it hurts you.
I am from Adonai, my God is ONE.
I am from Texas and mixed bloodlines.
I am from fried okra and peanut butter and jelly.
Descended from Bell Starr the girlfriend of Jessie James and related to the true sheriff of Nottingham.
From memories in my heart, before life fell apart, because the lives in them were ended before hey could start.
-Joshua Ray Shepard #874060 WA DOC
by Melissa Bee | Jun 14, 2026 | From the Staff, Your Sunday Read
Pour yourself a cup of coffee (or a glass of lemonade if summer has already arrived where you are) and settle in.
If things have seemed a little quiet around here lately (they’re not), it’s because much of this week has been spent building things.
In my kitchen, that meant a crash course in cabinet assembly with my son Joey. We’ve become surprisingly proficient at deciphering instruction diagrams, adjusting drawer slides, and operating a borrowed nail gun (thank you, Cesar!). After months of demolition, planning, waiting, measuring, ordering, and more waiting, the kitchen is finally beginning to look less like a construction zone and more like a room again.
At Adopt an Inmate, we’ve been building too.
This week we received the completed handoff of our new matching application, built by students at UC Berkeley through Blueprint, a technology-for-social-good organization that develops software for nonprofits. We were fortunate to be selected for this project, and over the past year their team has worked alongside us to create a matching tool designed specifically for Adopt an Inmate. Until now, every match has been created through a labor-intensive manual process. The new tool allows adopters to complete an application, review a small number of potential matches, and help guide the matching process while our team continues to provide oversight and final approval.
The application is now complete and in our hands. We’re beginning testing and reviewing the administrative side of the system, and if all goes well, we hope to launch it soon.
In a way, both projects feel similar right now. The cabinets are assembled but not installed. The app is finished but not yet launched. In both cases, things are beginning to look less like piles of parts and more like something that can actually be used.
Speaking of things coming together, Abby recently got her summer haircut and seems quite pleased with herself. Boo, meanwhile, has so far escaped the family tradition of every living being that steps in the house receiving paint on their nose when we’re painting. The tradition was started years ago by my stepfather, and although he’s no longer with us, it’s 
one of the small ways his energy still fills the house. Here’s evidence that Boo was an unwilling participant of said tradition – judge her expression for yourself. Hey, I didn’t make the rules.
Looking ahead, in the coming week we’ll be sharing a new series of stories and reflections centered around what it means to be justice-impacted. These stories won’t be about labels. They’ll be about people, relationships, families, and the ways our lives are shaped by systems we often don’t notice until they touch someone we love.
As always, thank you for being part of the Adopt an Inmate family. We appreciate every letter written, every donation made, every story shared, and every person who continues to walk alongside us.
We’ll have more to talk about next Sunday.
Until then,
Melissa
A question for readers:
Is there a person, tradition, or lesson from someone you’ve lost that still shows up in your daily life?
Quote of the Week:
“No dreams are beyond building.” ― Anthony T. Hincks
💌 Donate Stamps – SOS: Stamp out Silence!
✍️ Take the Quiz – How much do you know about U.S. prisons?
❤️ Give – Help us keep breathing together
🗣️ Add Your Voice – Submit your responses to our Good, Bad, Change poll
⏩ Forward This Email – Someone needs to see this
by Melissa Bee | Jun 8, 2026 | From the Staff, Your Sunday Read
Happy Sunday Monday, Friends 🐝,
Sometimes a Sunday Read becomes a Monday Read. Partly because WordPress happened. Partly because painting happened. Partly because cabinet delivery preparations happened. And partly because I continue to discover that I can only do one thing at a time, despite repeated attempts to prove otherwise.
My life is currently held together with painter’s tape and optimism.
The good news is that the delay came with progress: our new Volunteer Calendar & Events page is now live, event registration is up and running, and after a year without a kitchen, we’re making serious progress!
I’d call that a fair trade.
Here’s a peek at what we’ve been working on ⬇️.
Monthly Volunteer Sessions at Friends Church. We are so grateful to Eugene Friends Church for providing us with space for monthly volunteer gatherings.
New Volunteer Calendar & Event Registration Now Live. Spurred on by the above, we have created a public-facing Adopt an Inmate calendar, so you can see what we’re up to. Events marked with a 🐝 in the title are open for signups, using the button above the calendar.
Our Letters From Prison: In the Classroom initiative continues to grow, connecting students with the voices and experiences of people inside. We believe education, empathy, and human connection can change the conversation, and we’re excited about the partnerships already taking shape.
Bee Fest 2026. Most people see the finished work.
The letters and applications arrive & are processed.
The connections that are made.
The university partnerships.
The new programs.
The lives touched.
What they don’t always see are the volunteers behind the scenes making it happen. Every summer we bring those volunteers together – to plan, collaborate, solve problems, share ideas, and do a whole lot of work in support of the people we serve.
We’ve launched a campaign to help cover gathering expenses. If you’d like to help support the hive, you can do so here.
You can find the details of all of the above on our blog page.
🏠 Kitchen Corner
One year ago our kitchen was torn apart by water damage. Tomorrow the new cabinets finally arrive. Then we get to assemble them. Ourselves. 😱
We’ve spent the past year cooking with an egg cooker, washing dishes in the bathroom sink, and balancing colanders in the bathtub for larger pots and pans. And ordering takeout. Lots and lots of takeout.
The experience inspired Leah and me to create a “Prison Cooking” video series using only the tools available to people inside. I’m still trying to get my hands on a hot pot so we can do it authentically. Watch for those videos soon!
After a year of construction dust, detours, and workarounds, it finally feels like we’re turning a corner.
Thanks for buzzing by, and for all the ways you keep our hive humming. 🧡
With gratitude,
—Melissa 🐝
A question for readers:
What’s the longest home project you’ve ever lived through? Share with us in the comments below.
Quote of the Week:
“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” — Vincent van Gogh
💌 Donate Stamps – SOS: Stamp out Silence!
✍️ Take the Quiz – How much do you know about U.S. prisons?
❤️ Give – Help us keep breathing together
🗣️ Add Your Voice – Submit your responses to our Good, Bad, Change poll
⏩ Forward This Email – Someone needs to see this
by Melissa Bee | Jun 5, 2026 | From the Staff
We’re excited to share that Adopt an Inmate has a new home for our (local) monthly volunteer sessions.
Thanks to the generosity of our friends at the Eugene Friends Church, we’ll be gathering once each month in their conference room to process mail, work on projects, organize materials, and tackle the many behind-the-scenes tasks that keep the organization running.
Whether you’ve volunteered with us before or are simply curious about what we do, these sessions are a great way to get involved.
Many people are surprised to learn that Adopt an Inmate is powered entirely by volunteers. From matching participants and answering emails to processing mail and preparing educational materials, everything we do depends on people who are willing to donate a few hours of their time.
You don’t need special experience to help. We’ll provide guidance, explain the work, and find tasks that match your interests and comfort level.
We’ve also launched a public Adopt an Inmate calendar where you can view upcoming volunteer sessions, office hours, meetings, and special events. Events with the 🐝 are open to volunteers, click the “Reserve Your Spot” button on the calendar page to sign up.
*New volunteers, please complete our volunteer registration form (one time only) prior to signing up for events.
Whether you can help once, occasionally, or on a regular basis, we’d love to meet you.
Together, we’re building meaningful connections between people inside and outside prison walls – one letter at a time.
by Melissa Bee | Jun 3, 2026 | From the Staff
Every summer, we gather a small group of volunteers, board members, supporters, and friends for Bee Fest – our annual Adopt an Inmate volunteer work weekend.
This year’s Bee Fest will take place August 7–10 in Veneta, Oregon. and is especially meaningful as we expand Letters From Prison: In the Classroom, develop new mentorship opportunities, and prepare to launch our new self-serve matching app.
As always, we’re keeping it intentionally small. A handful of familiar faces will gather by the lake to work, plan, laugh, eat, and dream about what’s next for Adopt an Inmate.
Funds raised through our Bee Fest campaign help cover event expenses, meals, meeting space, volunteer support, and other costs associated with bringing people together to strengthen and sustain the mission.
Thanks to an early gift from one of our longtime supporters, we’ve already raised $250 toward our $2,000 Bee Fest goal.
If you’d like to support the hive, we’d be grateful for your help.
Whether you contribute financially, share the campaign, or simply help spread the word, you’re helping us continue building meaningful connections between people inside and outside prison walls.
