Subject: Furloughs
Inmates wishing to attend the funeral of an immediate family member must petition the warden. The warden is the sole decision-maker whether the inmate would be permitted to leave the compound at all. If by rare chance that the request is granted, the inmate would have to pay for the Corrections Officers time who would be tasked with accompanying them.
Subject: Parole, probation & supervised release
No, parole is only an option if the judge has listed it on the Judgment and Commitment Order. With 8-9 months to go, it is very unlikely parole was an option to begin with. Hang in there, they'll be home before you know it.
Subject: Prison discipline
Not good. Shu for months, loss of good time, then transfer from facility to higher custody level - much harder time going forward, loss of all privileges and maybe catch a new charge or two.
Subject: Inmate transfer
Two weeks of waiting is not unusual, and unfortunately there is no guaranteed timeline that either county is legally obligated to meet outside of one specific circumstance.
Inter-county transfers in Pennsylvania happen when the receiving county, in this case Allegheny, can spare two deputies to make the trip to Butler and bring him back. That sounds simple but it depends entirely on staffing availability, scheduling, and how many other transports Allegheny County has in the queue at the same time. Large...
Read moreSubject: Release questions
Tentative date is the current "release date" of "out date" given the inmate. It is tenative and that normally means there are more calculations to be determined before they give a final. This means they anticipate it could change so YES, you might get some good news.
Subject: Visitation
Yes, once when you arrive and meet and once when you depart. Keep it clean though. The guards are usually not too strict about it, but we would not test their good nature - they would see over-doing it as disrespecting them and might block future visits. Be mindful it is a prison.
Subject: Send inmate mail
The short answer is that you should not, and involving the attorney in this creates problems that are significantly worse than the problem you are trying to solve.
Attorney-client mail is privileged, meaning it is supposed to be opened only by the inmate and is not subject to the same mailroom inspection as regular correspondence. Some people try to exploit that privilege to get items into a facility that would otherwise be rejected. Facilities are aware of this and take it...
Read moreSubject: Inmate search
There are inmate searches that are able to show the charges and their parole date (if they are eligible at all) and their release date. This date calculates the current good time credit available to the inmate. There are no reports showing how much time is they have served to date.
Subject: Prison discipline
Not necessarily, but the transfer is a signal worth reading carefully because it points in one of two directions and which one matters a great deal.
When an inmate gets into a fight, spends three weeks in the hole, and then gets transferred to a different facility, the move is almost always deliberate. Facilities do not transfer people after a fight without a reason, and there are two common ones.
The first is that he was the aggressor or a willing participant...
Read moreSubject: Arrest record search
Basically there is no limit to the phone use at Leath Correctional (a South Carolina state prison), except for the cost of the calls. If there is money on the books they can stay on the phone all day. Many do especially in the first few days of incarceration. If you are not local to Greenwood SC, the calls start costing a lot. If you get a local line from InmateAid, the calls will be about $3-4 cheaper per call.
