It seems unfair that someone could spend 13 years in prison and walk out still owing money or facing outstanding warrants, but it is more common than most people realize and reflects how the legal system treats different types of obligations independently of each other. Serving a prison sentence satisfies the specific criminal penalty imposed for a specific conviction. It does not act as a blanket resolution of every legal matter attached to a person's name. Fines, restitution orders, and court...

The assumption that a dollar amount of fines automatically translates into a defined number of jail days is not how the system works. There is no standard conversion rate. What determines how long someone sits for unpaid fines is the nature of the obligation and the judge's interpretation of the circumstances. If the $5,000 represents court-ordered restitution, fines, or fees that a judge determined the person has the financial capacity to pay, refusal to pay is treated as defiance of a...

When someone is arrested and taken in overnight, the first 12 to 24 hours can feel like a complete information blackout for the people waiting on the outside. The good news is that there are reliable ways to get answers quickly. The most direct route is calling the booking department at the county jail where they were taken. Booking is the intake processing function of the jail and maintains a current log of everyone who has been brought in. Unlike the...

The confusion around transfer information is extremely common in the federal system, and the other inmate telling your brother he was being messed with may or may not be right depending on the source of the original information. In the Bureau of Prisons, designation decisions are made by the Designation and Sentence Computation Center in Grand Prairie, Texas. That information is then passed to the inmate's unit team, which includes the case manager, counselor, and unit team manager. These are the...

There are phones available most times of the day and early evening. Inmates may call through several programs that vary in price from $1.30 to $18.00 per 15 minutes. If they are calling you long distance, the calls are the most expensive. If they are calling you on a local number, the calls are the cheapest. If you are long distance, InmateAid can get you a local line that will ring on any phone number you give us and cut...

The 50% figure you mentioned is not consistent with how CDCR generally calculates time served. The standard for most California state inmates is 85% of the imposed sentence, with the remaining 15% accounted for through good time and work time credits earned during incarceration. Maintaining a clean disciplinary record is the primary way an inmate protects those credits and avoids having time added back onto the sentence. For a five year sentence beginning July 2013, a January 2016 release date reflects...

Whether a visit takes place in an open contact setting or through a glass partition with a phone is not a facility-wide policy that applies equally to every inmate. It is determined by the individual's custody level and housing assignment within the facility. Inmates at lower custody levels or in general population units are more commonly eligible for contact visits where you sit across a table in the same room. Inmates in higher custody classifications, administrative segregation, protective custody, or those...