Yes, but it is limited to the initial booking period and it is not quite the unlimited free call that popular culture suggests. Upon first being taken into custody, inmates are generally entitled to make at least one phone call. The purpose of that call is primarily to contact an attorney or arrange for legal representation, though in practice many people use it to reach a family member who can then help with finding legal help or posting bail. The right...

This is one of those counterintuitive quirks of the federal sentencing system that most people outside the legal world never hear about. A straight one-year sentence and a sentence of one year and one day sound almost identical but they produce meaningfully different outcomes in terms of actual time served. The difference comes down to how federal good time credits are calculated. Under Bureau of Prisons rules, good time credits apply to any federal sentence that exceeds one year. A sentence of...

Inmates who have money on their inmate trust accounts can purchase stamps and envelopes at the weekly commissary. If they do not have money on their books, the prison will provide indigent inmates with all the materials necessary to send out mail to their loved ones. If your inmate writes to you directly, using your address, the cost of the mailing is a 49-cent stamp. Many of our members use the Inmate Response Mail service through InmateAid. Your inmate would write...

Serving legal papers to an inmate is a routine process and prisons are set up to handle it. Here is how it works. Most correctional facilities have a notary public on staff. If your husband is willing to sign a waiver of summons, that waiver can be notarized right there at the facility. He would be called to the administrative offices by the unit secretary to accept service and sign any required documents. You do not need a court order or...

It depends on the level of custody the prison where your cousin is headed as the higher security has longer term sentences with inmates who have little to lose when they fight. However, the conduct inside a prison is nothing like what you see on television. But, fights could occur in any level prison or jail if there are conflicts. The same could happen on a street corner, a restaurant or a store. The likelihood of altercations will depend on the...

Turning yourself in voluntarily rather than being tracked down and arrested is genuinely meaningful and it is the right thing to have done. Whether it translates into reduced time is a harder question and the honest answer is that the options are limited once the violation has occurred and the warrant has been served. The fact that he contacted his parole officer and made arrangements to surrender rather than waiting to be caught is the strongest argument in his favor going...

We have answered this questions many ways in previous questions. It depends on what survival means to the specific inmate.  Prison is what you make of it. It can serve as a beneficial learning experience or it can be a living hell. Every inmate has a choice. An inmate can survive prison by simply following prison administration rules and respecting both officers and fellow prisoners. Offenders can make life harder on themselves by refusing to follow the direct orders of officers,...