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

When someone gets transferred to a new facility the visitation rules, scheduling process, and any waiting periods before visits are allowed vary enough from jail to jail that the only reliable source is the facility itself. For DeKalb County Jail in Tennessee specifically, visitation schedules, days, and times are set by the facility and can change based on staffing, population, and facility operations. The best move is to call the jail directly and ask to speak with someone who can give...

An inmate calling with a 713 area code displaying means that the carrier for that jail is GTL (connectnetwork.com). Their routing servers are in Houston TX but it has no bearing on the call's locality. Since Chautauqua County Jail is also a 716 number, we would like to know your whole phone number to see if you are in a different rate center (this is what we suspect). If it is, then getting you a Mayville number should reduce the...

The phone service at the particular correctional facility is set up through bid process. Whichever company has the contract for all inmate outbound calling and to tape record the calls. Therefore, you have to use them to receive calls. The choice is whether you pay then for a long distance call (to your number) or a local call (to the number we provide). Here is how it works... We get you a local line matching the rate center of town where the institution is located.Your inmate dials this local...

You can do either. Inmates that 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...

First, take a breath. This is one of the most common questions families have in the first days after someone they love gets locked up and there is a clear path forward. Getting money on an inmate's books is one of the most direct and meaningful things you can do right away. Commissary funds give your loved one access to food to supplement meals, hygiene items, phone credits, and other basics that make daily life inside more manageable. It is a...

One thing that doesn't make sense is if he was to be there on September 2, what is he doing driving around 10 days later "miles and miles away" instead of at the Wasatch Jail? It doesn't look good, like he had no intention of reporting. A 30 day sentence is not a big deal, but not reporting and then placing all the blame on a calamity of circumstances out of your control might turn it into something much bigger....

Yes, it is legally possible to be on state parole and federal probation simultaneously. The two supervision systems operate independently of each other and one does not automatically preclude the other. What it means in practice is that the person is answering to two separate supervising authorities at the same time. A state parole officer oversees compliance with state parole conditions, while a federal probation officer monitors the federal probation terms. The conditions imposed by each may overlap in some areas...

The rules around photos and magazines sent to inmates are set by the facility rather than by InmateAid, and those rules vary considerably from one institution to another. Understanding both what the facility allows and what InmateAid can process helps set the right expectations. On the magazines, most correctional facilities draw a clear line at full nudity. Publications that contain explicit nudity are rejected at the mailroom across virtually every federal and state facility in the country. Some facilities allow magazines...