Thanks so much, Bruce, for sharing your experience. I hope others will follow your lead and offer to assist if they can.
I have played postal chess with inmates. I have always used a PO Box for an address since my first opponent mentioned that my cards were being shared with other inmates who were interested in my moves. So I had visions of my home address and real name floating around a medium security prison.
I’m not sure how useful a precaution that is in the internet age, but I still wouldn’t send my real address into a prison.
Some prisons will not allow mail to inmates from PO box addresses. That said, your concern is not misplaced. In my case, I’m at home with two .40 S&W semi-automatics (32 rounds total) and a 9mm (nine rounds). If they come at night I have a 300 lumen tactical light to blind them as they’re shot. 
That would be a line in the sand for me. YMMV.
Completely understandable. I know a woman in the Boston area who had such a problem.
I would never give an inmate my home address. It’s not a safe thing to do, even if you are armed to the teeth like Rambo…or Brian L.
My home address has gone to hundreds of inmates for the past 20 years or so. It’s on the back cover of Chess Horizons magazine. No problems so far.
Good for you. You obviously don’t know inmates. I hope you stay safe.
Maybe Bob should be more worried about some of the other subscribers like those in Western MA. But seriously, in today’s world, once an inmate is released, he (usually) is really unlikely to want to go after someone he played chess with by snail mail. After the inmate is released, I doubt he’d have much difficulty locating someone knowing their name and the general area where they live.
We’re all going to die someday. Maybe people who reach out to help troubled people lead a slightly riskier life. (I did not have the pleasure of knowing Steve Dillard.) But perhaps these people also have a much richer life. A chacun son goût.
Trying to imagine real-world risks: suppose I were in prison and someone played the Berlin against me. Upon release, might I hunt that sadist down for wasting my precious postage?
I’m in the white pages. That makes me a sitting duck. But, to put it in perspective, although I played chess in prisons for more than 15 years, I’m sure that I am more vulnerable to almost any other people I have met than to released inmates.
*** Added later: ***
The original question was about postal chess. I guess that my experience with visiting prisons is only tangentially relevant.
Postal chess used to be more popular than it is now – nowadays most correspondence chess is by e-mail. My own most recent correspondence chess was in the 1980’s. Back then the whole idea of a postal tournament was, you’d give your address to some number of perfect strangers. Pretty insecure when you think about it. Some people played dozens of postal games at a time.
Plus, back then, everybody was in the white pages, and everybody had a copy of the white pages. So, not only your postal opponents, but also your over-the-board opponents, your co-workers, people you met socially – they could all find you. And if they themselves weren’t dangerous, maybe they knew people who were.
It’s interesting to realize how much of that has been changed by computers and the internet. But, back to the original topic, inmates at many prisons don’t have access to the internet. So postal is their only way to get correspondence chess opponents.
If you are in, say, Illinois, should you be afraid to give your home address to an inmate in California? Obviously, everybody must make their own choices in life, but there are crazier things to do, I would think.
I was never worried about the inmates I played chess with. It was the comment by one inmate that other inmates were looking at the postcards I had sent him. The institution was about 50 minutes away. I had a teenage boy and a teenage girl at the time.
I am willing to have contacts with inmates, but the institution would have to allow me to use a PO Box.
I understand your concern. I too have a daughter. I never let an inmate know anything about me personally or my family. As a former Assistant District Attorney I’m aware of the grudges inmates can carry with them for years. That’s why when I lived in MA I was licenced to carry concealed. Now, regarding my ex-wife? Hmmm…
lol. I’m more concerned about a problem developing when I’m inside a prison necessitating a lock down. I know a fellow who was doing a regular Shambala meditation session when that happened in the early evening. He didn’t get out until close to 3AM. Of course, lock downs can result from many causes, not all of which present a threat to the volunteer. The meditation fellow got stuck because several inmates decided to break the sprinkler heads in their cells flooding the wing of the prison they were housed in…
Rusty King is now in the All Service Postal Chess Club. For info on the club (and possibly Rusty King) try kingsindanger@aol.com
I played in that club for some 20 years. It’s a good club, and it does have a large number of inmates. Of course they generally can’t play each other.
May God bless who(m)ever paid for Rusty’s USCF membership 
For those interested in playing Mr.King his address is now…
High Desert State Prison
P.O. Box 3030
Susanville,CA 96127
Rusty King
D38967 B2-247
Ask him yourself if you want to know if he is in or interested in joining the USCF