General Prison Questions-Terminology — Ask the Inmate
The criminal justice system has its own language and navigating it without a guide is disorienting for families encountering it for the first time. This section covers the terminology that appears in court documents, facility communications, and case records, from the difference between jail and prison to what terms like disposition, detainer, adjudication, and supervised release actually mean in plain language. It also covers general questions about how prisons and jails operate, what a typical day looks like inside, how different security levels function, and what the practical differences are between federal, state, county, and private facilities. The answers here are written for people who have no prior experience with the system and need clear accurate explanations without legal jargon. If you encountered a term you did not understand this is the right place to start. See also our sections on Law Questions and Legal Terms, and Sentencing Questions.
You can write him through InmateAid, the letters will get there in one day as we are headquartered in Palm Beach County Florida only one county away from Broward County where he is locked up. You can send him magazines or books - with his situation, he is completely walled off from contact with other inmates. I've been in soitary and it is no joke. Reading was my only escape. There are other enlightenment opportunites down the road through college correspondence courses, but that
Read moreThere are no phone or power outages in ANY federal prison. They maintain their own power source if that were to happen to the electricity grid. There are many safeguards to protect the public from a federal prison losing power... all the gates, the cells, the pods are on electrical controls - they can't have an outage of any kind.
Read moreThis depends on their situation. If they have no money on their commissary, then it is money so they can buy the little extras. If it is phone time that they lack, then it's phone minutes. If they have those two and you are talking about buying them things, we highly recommend magazine subscriptions or books if they like to read.
Read moreSometimes, the orientation period if different depending on when you arrive. If A & O is done every Wednesday, like the federal facilities, and you get there on Tuewday, you wait one day, if you get there on a Wednesday, you'll have to wait a week.
Read moreThe process of getting yourself back together begins with questions like this. We are happy to help in any way possible with advice or mentoring. My favorite saying is, "show me your friends and I'll show you your future". My guess is that the people you are hanging around with are the main part of the problem. No one 15 years old is inherently bad on the inside, it is circumstance, opportunity and then acting on something without considering the
Read moreI was in federal, county and a private facility and there were female guards in all three places. It was uncomfortable in the maximum security setting as they oversaw the pod area, we had to shower in the open, right in front of their control room window.
Read moreYou will need to contact the inmate's counselor and tell them the situation. You will then be able to send the un-signed check to the facility where they will have your inmate endorse the check to be deposited in their commisary/phone account.
Read moreInmates benefit greatly from all the services inmateAID provides. Getting released...it feels unbelieveable, better than sex... until you have that again for the first time :))
Read moreThey are assessing the risk factors on the type of person they will be housing. The factors that make up the decision are the type of crime the offender was convicted of, the length of the sentence, whether that person is a first-time or multiple time offender, and is there violence in their history. The decision-makers compile all of these considerations and make a recommendation on the security level of the facility they'll be assigned to.
Read moreControl review refers to the custody classification where the inmates will live and at what custody level. Each prison system has a process for determining where an inmate should be housed. Each facility within the system is operated on one or more custody levels. Inmates may be promoted to lower custody levels during routine reviews if considered appropriate. The custody levels are high or maximum, medium, low and minimum (camp).
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