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

If they are in federal prison, you can email them for free but the inmate is charged by the system for the minutes they are on the email program whether reading incoming emails or writing outbound emails. The charges are deducted from their commissary account. The program is called Corrlinks. For other prisons, there are no free services - there is always some form of charge whether it be on the side of the inmate or the side of the loved...

Some facilities do charge a small co-pay for medical and dental visits, typically in the range of a few dollars per visit. It varies by facility, and not all jails have this practice. But here is the important part: an inmate who has no money in their account is not denied medical care because of it. Indigent inmates receive the same treatment as everyone else. The facility cannot legally withhold necessary medical attention because someone cannot pay. So if your mother...

It depends on the state that issued the warrant and how aggressively they choose to pursue it, and that calculation changes significantly based on the nature of the violation. When someone violates parole by failing to report rather than catching new charges, the issuing state has a decision to make. They can choose to extradite, meaning send law enforcement to pick the person up and transport them back to face the violation, or they can choose not to pursue extradition and...

It depends entirely on how that specific facility processes incoming money orders, and there is no way to know from the outside without checking. Some smaller county jails will process a deposit by name alone if there is no other inmate there with the same name. Others require the inmate ID number and will hold or return anything that arrives without it. Call Gonzales County Jail directly and let them know you sent a money order with just his name on...

InmateAid does not replace Securus, but it can make Securus significantly cheaper. The way it works is that Securus charges different rates depending on the type of number the call is going to, and those rates vary by carrier and location in ways that are not obvious to the person receiving calls. InmateAid finds the phone number in their system that triggers Securus's lowest available rate for your specific facility, and provides you with a forwarding number that routes calls...

The phone service at a particular correctional center is set up through bid process. Whoever has the contract for all inmate outbound calling and to tape record the calls - has essentially a monopoly. Therefore, you have to use them to receive any calls and they do not have anyone competing . The choice is whether you pay them for a long distance call (to your number) or a local call (to a number that we get you). If you...

In most cases we can get a number that will make the calls cheaper. There are about 12-13 state prisons that have flat rates where our service will not benefit you. Almost all of the county jails and federal prisons have rates that offer a break with a new number. Carefully read all of the postings about the service on our site. We make it easy to understand and offer assistance and coupons to try the service for a month...

Louisiana does have one of the more generous good-time credit systems in the country, and the 3-to-1 ratio is real, but it comes with conditions and does not apply to everyone. Under Louisiana law, eligible inmates can earn diminution of sentence credits that effectively allow them to serve significantly less than the sentence imposed. The way it works is that for every day served without a disciplinary infraction, additional days get credited toward the sentence. In some circumstances, that ratio does...

The visitation structure is based on the facility and it's custody level. The higher the security level, the more restrictive visitation is. For instance the highest security level of custody does not allow contact visits, the communication is conducted face-to-face through Plexiglas cubicles on recorded telephones. Medium and low security have visitation where the inmates and the visitor sit at a table across from each other - but very limited contact. Minimum security is very liberal where you can sit...

Letters are processed immediately upon entry unless after 6pm on Saturday, those letters will process Monday morning. We estimate that it takes 2-3 business days to make it to the jail. Once there, the staff opens and reads each piece of mail and inspects it for contraband. Once they decide the mail is fit to be handed out at mail call, your inmate will receive it. Any delay that occurs at the facility is out of our control. We make...