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

Military detention facilities do not make their inmate rosters publicly accessible. Unlike county jails and state prisons, which typically have searchable online databases, military brigs and confinement facilities operate under a separate system that is not open to public lookup tools. Coming up empty in a standard search is expected and does not mean something unusual is happening. If you already have confirmation that he is at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, the best way to establish contact and get information is to...

AB 109 realignment shifted responsibility for certain low-level felony offenders from the state prison system to local county supervision, specifically county jail and mandatory supervision handled by county probation departments. Because the supervision is county-based, any transfer request goes through the probation department, not the courts. Going back to court to ask for the transfer is not the right channel. The probation officer and their department handle interstate transfer requests under the Interstate Compact for Adult Offender Supervision, which is...

Working through the math: with 42 days of time served credited against a 120-day sentence, he has 78 days remaining from his June 1 sentencing date. That puts the estimated release date around August 18, 2016. Good time credit on a sentence this short is minimal to nonexistent. Most jurisdictions do not apply meaningful good time reductions on sentences under six months, so August 18 is the realistic target date rather than something meaningfully earlier, unless there is severe overcrowding at...

Losing contact without warning is one of the most stressful things families deal with, and it happens more often than people realize. There are several common reasons why calls can stop abruptly from a county jail, and most of them are not cause for panic. The most frequent explanation is a phone account issue. If the funds ran out on his phone account or there is a problem with the approved contact list, calls will not go through regardless of whether...

Do not set up any account or put any money on any inmate account until you know exactly who you are dealing with. This is a known scam that circulates inside jails and prisons. Inmates sometimes contact random people or use numbers found in other inmates' address books, asking them to fund accounts. The money ends up in the inmate's commissary and the person on the outside is left with nothing. If you do not know who is asking, do...

The retroactive sentencing relief you are referring to is a federal statute tied to changes in how certain offenses, primarily drug-related, are calculated under the federal sentencing guidelines. When Congress or the United States Sentencing Commission revises guidelines retroactively, eligible inmates can petition to have their sentence recalculated under the new, more favorable framework. The specific percentages you mentioned, 50 percent and 35 percent, are not terms we recognize as standard federal sentencing benchmarks, so you may be working from a...