Just thought of a question?

Have a question?

Ask The Inmate

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: Send inmate mail

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

Read more
Subject: Send inmate mail

You will be notified immediately upon receipt, via email, that your inmate has sent you a letter. We scan and upload it into your account for retrieval.

Read more
Subject: Education & vocational training

Most of the state and federal facilities offer courses of various foreign languages through Rosetta Stone computer programs. There are banks of non-internet computers that are available in the education department for inmates to improve their skills and vocation.

Read more
Subject: Medical treatment

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

Read more
Subject: Arrest record search

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

Read more
Subject: Send inmate money

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

Read more
Subject: Send inmate mail

There is no verification by the jail of the receipt of incoming mail. We only know if the letter is returned. If that occurs we investigate the reason and give you options as to what solutions are available. Sometimes a simple remail works, other times there are missing ID numbers, the inmate got moved or the wrong facility was selected - regardless of the reason will resend the letters at no charge.

Read more
Subject: Inmate phone calls

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

Read more
Subject: Inmate phone 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

Read more
Subject: Inmate phone calls

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

Read more
Search Arrest Records