Ask The Inmate. Real answers from people who've been there.

InmateAid does provide discount phone service for inmates at USP Terre Haute in Indiana. If you have heard otherwise or had trouble getting it set up, we want to make sure you have accurate information so you can take advantage of the savings. Here is how it works. InmateAid provides you with a local phone number in the same rate center as USP Terre Haute. Your inmate dials that number through the facility's phone system instead of a long distance number,...

There is no delivery confirmation or tracking system for commissary orders. Once funds are on the books and your inmate places a commissary order, the only way to know it was received is to ask them directly during a call or through a letter. Commissary orders are typically filled once a week on a set schedule for each housing unit. After the order is processed, items are delivered to the inmate's cell or bunk. If something on the order was out...

SCI Phoenix in Collegeville, Pennsylvania is one of the newer state correctional institutions in the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections system and has more modern communication infrastructure than older facilities. On back-to-back phone calls, most facilities including SCI Phoenix limit call length to 15 minutes per call and require a brief interval between calls before a new one can be placed. Whether consecutive calls are permitted within the same phone session depends on the specific rules at SCI Phoenix and whether other...

Yes, in most cases you can send a letter or message written in Arabic to an inmate housed at a United States Penitentiary (USP), including federal prisons operated by the Bureau of Prisons (BOP). However, there are a few important things to understand before sending foreign-language correspondence. All inmate mail entering a USP facility is screened and monitored by prison staff for safety and security reasons. When a letter is written in a language other than English, including Arabic, the mailroom...

Yes. Permanent resident status, commonly called a green card, does not protect someone from deportation when a criminal conviction is involved. Immigration consequences are one of the most serious and frequently overlooked aspects of a criminal case for non-citizens, and they can apply even to people who have lived in the United States for decades. Certain categories of criminal convictions trigger mandatory deportation proceedings under federal immigration law. These include aggravated felonies, which is a broad category that includes crimes like...

A transfer does not automatically carry your approved visitor status to the new facility. This is one of the more frustrating administrative realities families deal with and it can mean starting the approval process over from scratch. In the federal system, visitor approvals are generally tied to the inmate's central file and can sometimes transfer with them, but you should always confirm with the new facility rather than assuming. In state systems the rules vary significantly. Some states have centralized visitor...

An ICE detainer, officially called Form I-247A, is a written request from ICE to a jail, prison, or other law enforcement agency. It asks that agency to hold a person for up to 48 additional hours beyond when they would normally be released, so that ICE has time to come and take custody. There are several critical things to understand about detainers. First, a detainer is a request, not a court order or a warrant. Local law enforcement agencies are not...

They find out the same way most things get communicated inside: through the mail or through a phone call. If you set up a phone account through a service like Securus, GTL, or InmateAid, the inmate does not get an automatic notification from the carrier. The facility is not going to walk down to the unit and announce that someone set up an account for them. That information has to come from you. The most reliable way to let them know is...

The answer depends on which system your person is in, but in most cases the information is publicly available and accessible without making a single phone call. For federal inmates, the Bureau of Prisons inmate locator at bop.gov is the most reliable starting point. Search by name or federal register number and the record will show the facility, the sentence information, and the projected release date as currently calculated by the BOP. For state inmates, every state department of corrections maintains its...

Here's the terminology used at the Cobb County Adult Detention Center: Pods and Blocks The facility is organized into pods, with each pod containing multiple blocks. The original 864-bed facility was built with four pods, each having six blocks and one recreation yard. After the 1990s expansion, the rated capacity grew to over 2,000, then the facility expanded again to its current capacity of around 3,077 beds across multiple housing towers. So when referring to housing assignments, the terminology is: Pod (e.g., Pod A,...

The short answer is no, at least not through any legitimate channel, and the tablets themselves are designed to prevent it. Facility-issued tablets, whether through JPay, GTL, or another provider, are not connected to the open internet. They run on a closed network that is controlled and monitored by the facility and the tablet provider. The applications available on those tablets are specifically approved and installed by the provider. Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat are not on that...

Good instinct. A phone waiting for her on release day is one of the most practical things you can do, and there is no reason you cannot make that happen. Halfway houses allow residents to have cell phones, so once she arrives, she can keep it with her throughout her stay. Getting that communication line set up before she walks out the door means she is not navigating the first hours of freedom without a way to reach you. Shipping a...

Unfortunately yes, and it is one of the more frustrating practices in the prison phone industry. GTL and ConnectNetwork have broad authority over accounts on their platform and can place holds or blocks on accounts when a chargeback or disputed transaction is flagged, even if the dispute was legitimate and reasonable. The fact that they blocked every number on the account rather than just addressing the disputed line is an aggressive response, but it is within their standard policy framework. The...

Eleven cents per minute is already a low rate, and the honest answer is that even if InmateAid could shave something off that number, the savings would likely not cover the monthly line rental fee. Here is the math. InmateAid's phone line runs $19.95 per month. To break even on that cost at $0.11 per minute, you would need to save at least $19.95 in per-minute reductions each month. If the best available rate at your facility is, say, $0.06 per...

The short answer is that a traditional appeal is almost certainly not available at this point, but there are other avenues worth understanding. Direct appeals in the federal system, which is where bank robbery cases almost always land since robbing a federally insured bank is a federal crime, have strict filing deadlines. A direct appeal has to be filed within 14 days of sentencing. A motion to vacate, set aside, or correct the sentence under 28 USC Section 2255 has a...