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Ask a former inmate questions at no charge. The inmate answering has spent considerable time in the federal prison system, state and county jails, and in a prison that was run by the private prison entity CCA.

Ask your question or browse previous questions in response to comments or further questions of members of the InmateAid community.

Subject: Inmate phone calls

Inmate phone privileges begin after orientation, usually within the first two weeks. They will have to have some money in their inmate account or they could call you collect (THE most expensive prison call). If they have money to call, they can call every day...

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Subject: Inmate services & supplies

They sell shower shoes in the commissary. If JPay puts money in his commissary account, he should be all set.

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Subject: Send inmate mail

The cost is closer than most people expect. When you send mail yourself, the expense includes the stamp, envelope, paper, and any printing costs for photos. By the time you add up supplies, the per-letter cost is not dramatically lower than what a service charges, and that math does not account for your time in assembling, printing, and mailing everything. The real reason people use InmateAid when they could just as easily send mail themselves is privacy. When you

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Subject: Relationship issues

Happiness is not a switch that flips on release day. It is something that gets rebuilt piece by piece, and it looks different than it did before. The expectation that everything immediately returns to normal is one of the most common and painful traps people fall into after release. It does not work that way, for the person coming home or for the people who waited. What does work is focusing on the things you can control. A routine,

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Subject: Sentencing questions

no hay "mejores situaciones" en la prisión federal. los reclusos no tienen voz en cuanto a dónde son designados, ya sea en Virginia o en cualquier otro estado. North Neck Regional no es una instalación federal a largo plazo. Una vez que su recluso sea sentenciado, el BOP lo transferirá a la prisión federal designada, esa decisión se conocerá semanas después de que se imponga la sentencia.

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Subject: Inmateaid website questions

The money you put on your account covers the letters you send to him, not the other way around. For him to write back, all he needs is a postage stamp on his end. He writes a physical letter, addresses it to InmateAid's office in Florida, and mails it the old-fashioned way. That stamp is the only cost on his side. When his letter arrives at InmateAid's office, it gets scanned and posted to your account dashboard. You retrieve

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Subject: Commissary

No, we doubt that the 'for-profit' prison package companies would take food stamps as payment.

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Subject: Commissary

They sell them through the commissary

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Subject: Pending criminal charges

The career criminal label under the law is not based on danger level or whether rehabilitation was ever offered. It is purely mechanical. Three felony convictions trigger the designation regardless of the nature of those felonies, the person's character, or what opportunities they were or were not given inside. The law counts convictions, not context. That is the frustrating reality of how three strikes statutes and career criminal enhancements work. A person who committed three non-violent drug offenses and

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Subject: Send inmate money

A hundred dollars a month is a meaningful and generous contribution. It will cover a solid range of commissary basics, phone time, postage for letters, and small personal items without leaving him feeling like he has to ration everything. For most facilities, that amount lands comfortably in the range of what allows an inmate to stay connected, reasonably supplied, and not dependent on others for basic needs. Whether it is enough or too much really depends on the facility's

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