Act on this immediately, because furlough requests take time to process and time may be the one thing you do not have. Contact the facility and ask to speak with your husband's counselor or case manager today. Explain the situation plainly: his brother is on hospice, his condition is serious, and you are requesting a compassionate furlough for a family visit. Furloughs are not granted freely. The standard criteria are that the inmate has a clean disciplinary record and is reasonably...

Yes. Inmates are allowed to bring their personal property with them when they transfer between facilities. Everything he has purchased or been sent during his time at Dixon can go with him, packed into what the system typically calls a property box. The accepted items include clothing, shoes, reading material, personal photographs, letters he has received, and hygiene products. Anything that was legitimately acquired through the commissary or received through approved mail channels and is currently in his possession is eligible...

A warrant does not disappear when someone turns 18, and a no-bill warrant, which typically means the grand jury declined to issue an indictment on the original charges, is worth understanding clearly before your daughter takes any action. A no bill from a grand jury means the charges were not formally advanced at that time, but it does not necessarily mean the case is completely closed or that the warrant has been lifted. Prosecutors can sometimes refile depending on the...

Early release in this situation is unlikely but not impossible, and a furlough is the more realistic avenue to pursue. Some facilities will authorize a supervised furlough for an inmate to be present during a family medical emergency or death, but these are granted rarely and almost always under strict conditions. At medium custody, the bar is higher than it would be for a minimum-security inmate. When they do occur, the inmate is typically accompanied by two corrections officers for...

There are two legitimate explanations, and one of them is far more common than people assume. The first and most likely is that the sentence was life with the possibility of parole, not life without. These are fundamentally different sentences even though both are labeled "life." A life-with-parole sentence means the person is eligible to appear before the parole board after serving a minimum number of years, often 15 to 25 depending on the state and the charge. If the board...