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Ask a former inmate questions at no charge. The inmate answering has spent considerable time in the federal prison system, state and county jails, and in a prison that was run by the private prison entity CCA.

Ask your question or browse previous questions in response to comments or further questions of members of the InmateAid community.

Subject: Release questions

It is our understanding that the early release programs are not qualifying most violent offenders.The law is new and there are no cases to point to, but they define the "violent offender" in the language. An inmate will have to petition the court for a resentencing to even get considered for an early release. The sheer risk of having a violent crime happen by someone released on their watch is not going to get much of a chance with this law. You can always

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Subject: Marriage in prison

Probably not. Inmate marriage is usually reserved for long-term offenders. The county jails are not equiped to handle an inmate wedding.

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Subject: Commissary

Inmates shop at the commissary normally once per week. You can place money on their boks using the various inmate money transfer companies. There is either a weekly or monthly maximum spend limit ($75/wk - $340/mo). You cannot normally shop for them unless the facility has an arrangement with a vendor that sells commissary baskets. You would have to check with the exact facility to see if they have a company for you to contact.

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Subject: Relationship issues

There is nothing easy about it, and anyone who tells you otherwise has not lived it from either side. Separation is painful in a way that is hard to describe to someone who has not experienced it. The uncertainty, the financial pressure, the social stigma, the loneliness of holidays and milestones passing without the person you love present, all of it accumulates. Time does help, but it does not make the weight disappear. What does help is staying

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Subject: Send inmate mail

All correspondence sent to the inmates has the InmateAid corporate address on it. We do not share your information whatsoever. Inmates do write back to our members via the Letters from Inmates service. The letters are received here and we scan them into your My Account area and then notify you by email that you have inmate mail. The cost to retrieve the letter is $1.49. If you include your address in the letter then the inmate would probably correspond

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Subject: Sentencing questions

The parole threshold dates are set by the judge in his Judgment and Commitment Order. If the inmate has already served 80% of their sentence, there were either no parole opportunities offered or they were denied. We know that the states offer 15% good time and if your inmate does indeed have a clean record, he might be within a year of being released to a halfway house. Of course, we are guessing because we do not have the benefit

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Subject: Visitation

Yes, and the visitation for work release inmates is quite comfortable. Call the facility for exact times and requirements.

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Subject: Relationship issues

You want to change who your inmate may call? That will NEVER happen. You cannot control the inmate's call list, visitation list or how they spend the money they have on their books. Inmates have privacy rights, too. If you do not want an inmate to contact you, you can call the facility and speak to a counselor or case manager - they will see to it that you are not disturbed.

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Subject: Visitation

That depends on the facility. Some require that you fill out a visitation form that is sent into the national crime database (NCIC). Most if not all jails and prisons will nt allow a felon or former inmate to visit a current inmate without pre-approval for a special visit by the warden. There are other facilities that will allow a visit with your driver's license. You should call them directly to make sure you are in compliance before making the

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Subject: Sex offenders

We don't have any rapists here to answer this question, but if you had a firearm at your side the intruder would not be thinking about sex at all.

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