New app connects people to loved ones behind bars

BLAIR Sandlain was just 2 years old when her father was locked up on aggravated-assault charges.

As an elementary-school student, she used to write him letters in her childish scrawl. That stopped, though, once Sandlain got to high school. Classes, boys and other teenage concerns took precedence over keeping up her correspondence.

"When I would go see my father, it would be so emotional for me when the gates would close," recalled Sandlain, co-owner of PNK Elephant boutique, on South Street. "I was too young to realize what a big difference a letter or a picture could make."

Too bad Sandlain, now 29, hadn't yet come up with her latest invention - an app called Connect Inmate. Launched last month, it helps people communicate with loved ones behind bars.

Instead of writing letters the old-fashioned way, friends and relatives can send a text or email from their cellphones to Connect Inmate, which prints out correspondence and photos and sends them to the prisoner via the U.S. Postal Service. Customers also can use the service to send money orders.

It's a smart idea, considering that an estimated 2.2 million Americans are incarcerated. When offenders are locked up, they leave behind relatives and friends - people who may harbor complicated emotions about going out of their way to stay in touch.

At the same time, letter-writing is heading the way of VHS tapes and rotary-dial telephones. It's more convenient to dash off a quick text or email - but how to send it when the recipient is behind bars with no smartphone?

Connect Inmate bridges the gap. In its first month, the free app has been downloaded roughly 2,300 times and processed about 200 letters and 17 money orders, according to co-owner Carmena Ayo-Davies. Connect Inmate charges $1.50 per "letter" and 50 cents per picture. Money orders are $2 plus a 3.5 percent service charge.

There are a number of companies online that offer similar services.

"This is a new age," said Ayo-Davies, 33, who also owns Center City-based 3BG Marketing Solutions. "Everything is technology-based. Do you know how many letters come through [Connect Inmate] for, like, Meek Mill?"

"I think we should reach out to Teresa Giudice from 'Housewives' to see if she would want to be behind it," Ayo-Davies added.

Mill, real name Robert Williams, is doing three to six months at the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility, in the Northeast, after violating probation from a 2009 gun and drug case.

Giudice, one of Bravo's "Real Housewives of New Jersey," was sentenced last month to 15 months after pleading guilty to bankruptcy fraud and conspiracy. Her sentence starts Jan. 5, reportedly at a prison-camp facility in Danbury, Conn.

Early users have praised Connect Inmate for its convenience.

Sonye Rasool, a local designer who's a friend of Sandlain's, had been procrastinating about writing to a relative at Hoffman Hall, a facility that provides education and rehabilitation for Philadelphia prison inmates. But after downloading the app last week, she's written to him twice.

"It takes the hassle of out of it. You don't have to think of finding an envelope or finding a stamp," Rasool said. "People are not utilizing Microsoft Word or even pen and paper. Everything is on your phone. It's right there, hassle-free."

Maybe.

But there's a big difference between dashing off an email and sending a real letter to someone behind bars. Besides phone calls, missives from home might be all the outside contact an inmate gets for years.

Chad Dion Lassiter, president of Black Men at Penn School of Social Work and a trustee on the Philadelphia Prison System, agreed with me. He recently got a letter from an inmate that moved him so much that he carried it around with him for days.

"I don't want us to lose the aspect of sitting down and really putting thoughts on paper and sending it off," Lassiter told me last week. "There's something empowering about putting the letter in an envelope and mailing it yourself."

Ayo-Davies, who grew up in Bucks County and majored in business at Cabrini College, has been getting a crash course in America's prison system since joining forces with Sandlain on Connect Inmate.

"I don't even know people in prison. I didn't grow up in that life," said Ayo-Davies, whose father is a banker.

A Detroit native, Sandlain moved to Philadelphia in 2011 to open PNK Elephant with Kijafa Vick, wife of former Eagles quarterback Michael Vick. A trendy boutique specializing in clubwear and accessories, earlier this year the business inked a licensing deal for a PNK Elephant offshoot in Saudi Arabia.

Sandlain credits her father, Blake Sandlain, with inspiring the app.

"He would call me all the time and say, 'I know that fashion thing is your dream but you really need to do something to help prisoners,' " she recalled. "He's been saying this for years."

And like a good daughter, Sandlain obeyed her dad - even if he is still jailed.

Blog: ph.ly/HeyJen