Relationship Issues — Ask the Inmate
Incarceration puts enormous strain on every type of relationship, marriages, partnerships, parent-child bonds, friendships, and family connections of all kinds. The distance, the communication barriers, the financial stress, and the emotional weight of the situation test relationships in ways that most couples and families are not prepared for. This section covers how to maintain a healthy relationship during incarceration, how to navigate jealousy, suspicion, and communication breakdowns when contact is limited to calls and letters, what the research shows about relationships that survive incarceration versus those that do not, how to support a partner or family member emotionally from the outside, and how to approach the changes that both people go through during a long sentence. The guidance here is honest about the difficulty while being realistic about what is possible with consistent effort and genuine commitment. See also our sections on Family Services, Visitation, and Marriage in Prison.
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You would have to check with the custodian of the county records to see if they have you registered as married.
Read moreThis is a serious situation and there are concrete steps you can take immediately to make the calls stop and protect yourself legally. The most direct action is to contact the facility where he is incarcerated and report the calls to the warden's office or the facility's compliance department. Every call made from a correctional facility is recorded and monitored. The facility has the ability to pull the call logs, verify the contact occurred in violation of the court
Read moreThis is one of the most important questions anyone in this situation can ask themselves, and the honest answer requires looking at it from two separate angles because they are not the same question. Falling in love with someone who is incarcerated is real and it happens more than most people on the outside would expect. The circumstances of prison create an intensity of communication that is rare in everyday relationships. Letters, limited phone calls, and visits stripped of
Read moreThere are two kinds of men. Men that cheat and men that don't. If you know a man to not be faithful, you already know the answer to your question.
Read moreAccount balances inside a correctional facility are treated as private financial information, and there is no public database or lookup tool that gives outside parties access to what an inmate has on their books. The facility is not going to hand that information out freely and the phone provider or commissary system certainly will not. That said, there is one avenue worth trying. Some case managers and counselors will share that information if you call and ask nicely. It
Read moreThese are two of the most important questions anyone connected to this situation can ask and they deserve honest answers rather than comfortable ones. On whether abusers can truly change, the research says yes, but with significant caveats that matter enormously in practice. Change is possible but it is not common, it is not automatic, and it is not produced by incarceration alone. Time behind a wall does not rehabilitate anyone. What produces genuine change in people with patterns
Read moreHigh Desert State Prison in Nevada is a medium to high security facility with a reputation that sometimes gets exaggerated in the telling. Like any prison of its security level, it is not a comfortable place, but inmates who carry themselves respectfully and stay out of other people's business generally do their time without serious incident. On the transgender population, yes, Nevada state prisons house transgender inmates within the general population in some circumstances, consistent with state policy. Interactions
Read moreConjugal visits are not permitted at Louisiana State Penitentiary. Officials at the Louisiana State Penitentiary have never supported conjugal visits. Currently, only a handful of states permit conjugal visits for inmates, including California, New York, Washington, New Mexico, and Connecticut. Louisiana is not among them and has not been for many years. By 2015, almost all states had eliminated conjugal visit programs in favor of other approaches. The trend nationally has been away from conjugal visits rather than
Read moreBefore an inmate is released, the facility runs a check through the National Crime Information Center, commonly known as NCIC. This is a federal database maintained by the FBI that contains records of outstanding warrants, detainers, protection orders, and other law enforcement flags from jurisdictions across the entire country. If the NCIC check comes back clean, meaning no outstanding warrants, holds, or detainers from any jurisdiction, the release proceeds as scheduled. If something comes back on the check, the
Read moreIt happens, but it is not common and the circumstances that make it possible are more limited than the question might suggest. Visitation rooms are supervised environments. Officers are present, movement is restricted, and interactions between visitors who do not know each other are typically brief and incidental. The opportunity for meaningful connection between strangers in that setting is genuinely limited compared to what gets imagined from the outside. That said, visitation waiting areas can be a different
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