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

Yes, paying the fees before she goes to court can make a real difference. The charge she is facing is essentially contempt of court for non-payment of a court-ordered obligation. There are no debtor's prisons in the United States, and courts are generally not interested in incarcerating someone over unpaid fees when the fees can simply be paid. Bringing the account current before the hearing removes the core basis for the contempt finding and gives the judge a reason to...

The tablet program in the federal Bureau of Prisons is real but was still in a pilot phase at a limited number of facilities at the time of this writing. Not every BOP institution has them, and availability varies by facility. Where tablets are available, inmates can typically use them for music, educational content, and messaging, but access is controlled and the content is curated by the BOP. If you want to know whether a specific facility has the tablet...

At a minimum, he is looking at serving out the three months remaining on his parole. That is the floor. A new arrest while on parole triggers an automatic violation, and the parole board will revoke his remaining supervision and send him back to complete what was owed. The bigger question is whether the new meth charges result in a separate prosecution. If the district attorney files new charges, he is now facing two things at once: the parole revocation and...

We would advise you to go with your feelings. You said, " I'm 100 sure of that should I continue keeping in contact with him", this is what you should do, but be mindful of the baby momma and the child. These two people will be in the picture for many, many years and you will have to accept it for your relationship with him to work. If you make that transition smooth, the rest will be a piece of...

Since his sentences are running concurrently, the 4-year TDC sentence is the controlling number. Everything runs together rather than stacking, so the total time he is working against is 48 months, not 48 plus 8. In Texas, TDCJ generally requires inmates to serve at least 85 percent of their sentence before becoming eligible for release. At 85 percent of 48 months, he is looking at serving roughly 41 months total. With 8 months of back time already credited, that leaves approximately...

Release dates are calculated by the Department of Corrections, not by the court or the jail. The jail holds him and the court handles sentencing, but the actual release date math happens at the DOC level once all the paperwork is processed. That is why the jail may not have a firm date to give you, particularly when his situation involves multiple overlapping matters. Right now his case has moving parts that make a release date harder to nail down. He...

There is no standard answer for a probation violation sentence because the outcome depends almost entirely on the underlying charge he was originally sentenced for, the nature of the violation itself, and his history leading up to it. A first violation for a technical issue like a missed check-in or a failed drug test is treated very differently from a violation that involves new criminal conduct. What the judge will look at is the original sentence and what was suspended in...

Lost or missing evidence is a serious issue that a competent defense attorney can challenge directly, and it needs to be challenged, not accepted. When law enforcement claims that video or audio evidence was lost, destroyed, or cannot be located, the defense has grounds to file a motion arguing that the loss was improper and that the court should draw an adverse inference, meaning the jury should be allowed to assume the missing evidence would have helped the defendant. This...

Prisons are for long term detention. There are also many different prison types that serve different purposes. Prisoners are placed in a specific type of prison based on the security risk they pose. Your inmate's profile determines where the BOP designates his custody level. Normally, inmates are segregated in a way that assigns them based on the nature of their crimes, and for safety reasons. High security institutions, also known as United States Penitentiaries (USP), have highly secured perimeters featuring high...