"I have been a faithful listener for the past seven years," the inmate wrote.

Friends bought him a laptop computer, and he used it to help other inmates write letters and legal documents.

One inmate, Nestor Galleano, wrote in a letter to a friend that prosecutors had told him what to say.

He survived by helping the inmates to write letters to wives and lovers.

He noted that inmates barred from seeing relatives through a glass panel could, after all, still write or call.

"For security reasons, we want to know who inmates are writing to and getting mail from."

Sometimes, though, the letters have a touch of prison parlance to them, as when an inmate wrote this of one particular puppy: "Don't let him play you."

Mr. Moskowitz said the inmate also wrote that "the toilets have been broken for the last two days."

He claimed inmates wrote threatening remarks on his family photographs and placed excrement on his belongings.

The inmates wrote letters about those and other things to legislators and others outside the prison system.