Ask The Inmate. Real answers from people who've been there.

Cimarron Correctional Facility in Cushing, Oklahoma is a privately operated prison run by CoreCivic. Like all correctional facilities, new arrivals go through an Admissions and Orientation process before phone calls and visitation become available. That orientation period typically takes one to two weeks, sometimes a little longer depending on how many new arrivals are being processed at the same time. During that window your husband will be meeting with medical staff and his unit team, and he will have the opportunity...

A halfway house, formally called a Residential Reentry Center, is the bridge between incarceration and full release. How long someone stays there and what the experience looks like depends significantly on whether the sentence was federal or state and the length of the original sentence. For federal inmates, halfway house placement is determined by the Bureau of Prisons and typically ranges from a few months to up to a year. The First Step Act expanded halfway house eligibility and many federal...

Texas does not have a conjugal visit program. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice eliminated conjugal visits decades ago and has not reinstated them. Regardless of the sentence length or the nature of the charges, conjugal visits are not available at any Texas state prison. Texas is among the majority of states that no longer offer this type of visitation. As of 2026, only a small handful of states, including California, New York, Washington, and Connecticut, maintain any form of extended...

Thank you for the kind words. If she does not have money to get writing material to send letters, the prison has a program for indigent inmates. They supply the paper, pencil, stamps and envelopes. Commissary is available to inmates, once a week. If your inmate has a job in the prison, they get paid a nominal amount that may be used to purchase items at the commissary.  Inmates receive an incentive wage in the amount of $.40, $.70, or...

Once an InmateAid local number is requested and payment is processed, the number is typically assigned and ready to send to your inmate within an hour. That is fast enough that you can include it in a letter the same day or pass it along through the next available phone call. The setup fee for the local number service is $19.95. Whether that cost makes sense depends on how much the number actually saves per call and how frequently your inmate...

If your inmate is moved to a different prison, you do not lose the phone service you already paid for. All you need to do is contact InmateAid with the new facility information. Once they have the updated location, they will assign you a new local number that matches the rate center for that facility. This is what keeps the calls at the lower local rate. There is no additional charge to switch the number when your inmate transfers. The update is...

The phone system should be the same in Allenwood as in almost all of the federal facilities. The inmates use Trulinks which is monitored and maintained by the BOP. Inmates have an internal, closed computer system that controls the inmate accounts: commissary, Corrlinks email and the telephone system. Loved ones from the outside fund this account centrally through Western Union. The inmate moves the money between the services at their discretion. During the holiday time (Nov & Dec) inmate get...

You pay $19.95 for the local telephone number that comes with 300 long distance minutes or 1000 long distance minutes. There is nothing on the site that mentions "unlimited minutes" and any site that does, usually has other fees for things you won;t know about until you are billed for them. There are no complaints about InmateAid andthis service and as long as you know that you have to use the prison telephone company with your local line, you will...

Inmates are not personally notified when money is added to their phone account. There is no staff member who goes and tells them. They usually find out when they check their balance on the phone system or when they go to make a call and hear the available funds. As for getting your phone number to them, you will need to send it yourself. Jail and prison staff generally will not pass along messages or contact information. The best ways to do...

The phone service at all of the prisons in the Arkansas Department of Correction is set up through bid process. In this case, GTL has the contract for all inmate outbound calling and to tape record the calls - essentially a monopoly. Therefore, you have to use them to receive any calls. The choice is whether you pay GTL for a long distance call (to your number) or a local call (to a number that we get you). If you...

At McCreary Satellite Camp in Pine Knot, KY, the discount phone service option is unfortunately not available. This is one of those rare locations where local number solutions cannot be set up due to how the phone lines are configured in that area. Here is how the phone system works there: All federal inmates use the Bureau of Prisons phone system, which is a closed system. Your loved one has to add your number to their approved calling list, and calls can...

When your husband arrives at Colwell Detention Center, he will first go through an intake process called Admission and Orientation, often referred to as A and O. During this time, the facility evaluates him, assigns housing, and sets up his records. This intake period usually takes anywhere from a few days up to a couple of weeks, depending on the facility. In some cases, parts of orientation can extend longer, but basic processing is typically done within the first week or...

Some facilities do offer online commissary services where you can purchase food or small items like snack packages, but it depends entirely on the specific jail or prison your dad is in. Each facility contracts with different vendors, so there is no single system that works everywhere. If his facility supports it, you would typically order through that approved vendor’s website, and the items are delivered directly to your dad through commissary. That is the only way food items like cupcakes...