Subject: Medical treatment
Not necessarily. But if you are in contact with your inmate and haven't heard from them and suspect something, you should DEFINITELY call the facility and ask to speak to the counselor or unit team secretary. They will tell you if your inmate has become ill.
Subject: Work release
Someone on the outside has not ability to influence whether an inmate is granted work release. The decision-makers inside the prison select inmates with a short sentence and have exhibited perfect behavior, no incident reports, no drama. Best advice you can give them is to "behave like a model prisoner".
Subject: General prison questions-terminology
E5 is a custody level, the highest. The E5 inmates are housed in high or maximum security prisons.
Subject: Furloughs
Inmates wishing to attend the funeral of an immediate family member must petition the warden. The warden is the sole decision-maker whether the inmate would be permitted to leave the compound at all. If by rare chance that the request is granted, the inmate would have to pay for the Corrections Officers time who would be tasked with accompanying them.
Subject: Parole, probation & supervised release
No, parole is only an option if the judge has listed it on the Judgment and Commitment Order. With 8-9 months to go, it is very unlikely parole was an option to begin with. Hang in there, they'll be home before you know it.
Subject: Prison discipline
Not good. Shu for months, loss of good time, then transfer from facility to higher custody level - much harder time going forward, loss of all privileges and maybe catch a new charge or two.
Subject: Inmate transfer
Two weeks of waiting is not unusual, and unfortunately there is no guaranteed timeline that either county is legally obligated to meet outside of one specific circumstance.
Inter-county transfers in Pennsylvania happen when the receiving county, in this case Allegheny, can spare two deputies to make the trip to Butler and bring him back. That sounds simple but it depends entirely on staffing availability, scheduling, and how many other transports Allegheny County has in the queue at the same time. Large...
Read moreSubject: Release questions
Tentative date is the current "release date" of "out date" given the inmate. It is tenative and that normally means there are more calculations to be determined before they give a final. This means they anticipate it could change so YES, you might get some good news.
Subject: Visitation
Yes, once when you arrive and meet and once when you depart. Keep it clean though. The guards are usually not too strict about it, but we would not test their good nature - they would see over-doing it as disrespecting them and might block future visits. Be mindful it is a prison.
Subject: Send inmate mail
The short answer is that you should not, and involving the attorney in this creates problems that are significantly worse than the problem you are trying to solve.
Attorney-client mail is privileged, meaning it is supposed to be opened only by the inmate and is not subject to the same mailroom inspection as regular correspondence. Some people try to exploit that privilege to get items into a facility that would otherwise be rejected. Facilities are aware of this and take it...
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