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

Most questions are answered within a few hours. When your question has been responded to, you will receive a notification by email and the answer will also appear in your InmateAid account dashboard. Both places, so you will not miss it. If your question did not get answered, there are a couple of reasons that happens. The most common one is that a very similar question has already been addressed somewhere in the archive. With over 5,000 questions and answers logged...

This one hurts, and it deserves a straight answer rather than a reassuring one. When an inmate tells the person they love to step back, it is almost never actually about wanting distance. It is usually about pain they do not know how to manage. Someone staring down a long sentence starts doing a particular kind of math in their head. They look at the time they have left, they look at the person on the outside living a full life...

Duplicate listings across facilities are more common than you might expect, particularly when an inmate has been recently transferred and both the old and new facility records have not yet been fully updated in the database. It creates confusion but it is usually a timing issue rather than a mystery. The most reliable tool for locating current custody status is VINELink at vinelink.com. VINE stands for Victim Information and Notification Everyday, and while it was built primarily as a victim notification...

The facility is not going to deliver that information for you. Staff are not in the business of passing phone numbers from outside parties to inmates, and while occasionally an empathetic officer will make an exception, that is not something you can count on or plan around. The reliable way to get the number to her is through mail. Send a letter or postcard to Gilpin County Detention Center with the InmateAid number written clearly inside. That piece of mail will...

Yes, both are significantly restricted the moment someone goes into the SHU, and the limitations are more severe than most families expect going in. Phone access drops to one 15-minute call per week. That is it. Whatever frequency of calls you were used to before the hole is gone, replaced by a single weekly window that has to count for everything. Make sure your number is active and you are available when that call comes because there is no rescheduling it...

You might find that attitude in any walk of life. The cashier at Walmart, the nurse at your doctor's office or the deli man at the grocery could all have "a bad day". For you to think that YOU need to kiss their ass is an indictment on your attitude. WAKE UP, this isn't a hotel or restaurant. The guards are not social workers, they are paid to oversee prisoners, not patrons. YOU follow their rules without arrogance or don't...

On the minutes, yes, the standard plan runs 300 minutes per month. The exception comes during the holiday season. In November and December the Bureau of Prisons increases the allotment to 400 minutes to account for the higher volume of family calls during that time of year. That extra hundred minutes makes a real difference during the stretch of the year when staying connected matters most. On computers, federal facilities do have them, but they are not the open internet access...

The specific conditions are not handed to you in advance. They are delivered at the initial supervision interview, which happens immediately after release with the probation agent assigned to the case. That first meeting is not optional and sets the foundation for everything that follows. At that interview the probation agent walks through every condition of supervision individually and the probationer signs off acknowledging they understand each one. From that point forward, those conditions are the rulebook, and violating any of...

InmateAid tracks the outgoing side of the process, not the delivery confirmation at the facility end. Here is what that means in practice. When you place an order, a confirmation email goes out with the details of what was sent and when. From there, everything ships through the United States Postal Service, and standard USPS transit times apply. The general window is two to three business days from the date of mailing to reach the facility's mailroom, though destination and distance...

From the time you send a letter through InmateAid, expect it to reach the facility's mailroom within two to three business days via USPS. Once it arrives it goes through the standard mail inspection process before being handed out at mail call, so factor in an additional day or two depending on how busy the mailroom is at that facility. On the response side, yes, your inmate can absolutely write back. InmateAid's return address is printed on the outgoing envelope, and...

Any cash an inmate has on them when they are booked gets taken by facility staff and held securely. It does not disappear. The money is logged and deposited directly into the inmate's trust account, which is the same account used for phone calls and commissary purchases. So if your person walked in with cash, that money is already working for them inside without anyone on the outside needing to do anything. For adding money from the outside, the process depends...