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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: Send books and magazines

The subscription does not go to waste. If your inmate is released before the subscription period ends, the remaining issues simply follow them to their new address on the outside. All you need to do is email aid@inmateaid.com with the updated address once he is home or has a confirmed address where he will be living. InmateAid will update the delivery address with the publisher and the remaining issues will be rerouted accordingly. He will not miss a single

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Subject: Send inmate mail

Yes. InmateAid postcards are accepted at every facility in the country, including the Blount County Detention Facility in Tennessee. Every jail and prison in the United States is required to accept mail delivered through the United States Postal Service, and that is exactly how InmateAid postcards are sent. They go out pre-stamped, printed on approved stock, and arrive through USPS just like any other piece of mail. Mailroom staff at facilities across the country recognize InmateAid envelopes and postcards,

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Subject: Relationship issues

Not unless your inmate friend were to tell you. It is most likely some sort of incident report, BUT the privacy of inmates is their business on the inside and no one else's, just the same as it is for you on the outside,

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Subject: Prison discipline

Uh oh! That was not a good idea. When they catch him, he will be sent to a higher security prison and will get none of the privileges he was getting prior to this bone-headed "escape", which is how the government will see it.

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Subject: Bail & bond questions

Yes, it is possible, and the process is more straightforward than most people realize. Bail bondsmen actively market their services inside jails. Their contact information is typically posted on bulletin boards or available through facility staff, because getting people out quickly is how they make their living. An inmate who has a debit card in their property and sufficient funds can contact a bondsman directly from inside. The bondsman will take a credit or debit card over the

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Subject: General prison questions-terminology

maximum security

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Subject: Residential drug abuse program (rdap)

The RDAP program is inside the prison not off-site. The inmates are under the care and supervision of the psychology department (they run the program).

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Subject: Inmate phone calls

It depends on the facility and how their phone approval system works, and the answer is different in federal versus state and county systems. In the federal system, inmates manage their own approved call lists and add numbers directly through the phone system at their unit. There is no automatic flag that cross-references approved numbers against co-defendant status. Unless a specific no-contact order has been issued by the court prohibiting communication between co-defendants, a federal inmate can technically add

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Subject: Ice-immigration enforcement

Hopefully, he won't have to do any time but with this current administration, we have no idea what kind of time they are handing out third timers. The "zero tolerance" enforcement policy is to charge every person “illegally entering” the U.S. along the southwest border with a crime. Asylum seekers would be prosecuted under section 1325(a) of the 8 United States Code (U.S.C.), which states that “improper entry by alien” is a federal misdemeanor with a first offense carrying maximum fines of $50 to $250 and/or a

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Subject: Sentencing questions

The answer depends on two things more than anything else: who he made the threat to and what his prior record looks like. On the charge itself, threatening to physically harm someone typically falls under criminal threatening, menacing, or terroristic threats depending on the state. Most of these charges are misdemeanors at the lower end, particularly for a verbal threat without a weapon, without a specific target in a protected category, and without prior escalation. A first offense misdemeanor

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