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

Yes, both you and your one-year-old can visit. Being married is not a requirement for visitation at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Los Angeles. For you, the process involves submitting a visitation application to the facility and completing a background check. MDC Los Angeles is a federal facility operated by the Bureau of Prisons, and the BOP requires all prospective visitors to be approved before visiting. Once approved your name goes on the inmate's approved visitor list and you can schedule...

When a sentenced inmate serving time at a state prison gets pulled back to a county jail, there is almost always a court-related reason behind it. The Georgia Department of Corrections does not move inmates out of their designated facility without cause, and a transfer back to Fayette County specifically points to something happening in that county's court system. There are two common explanations. The first is a new charge. If something has come to light, whether a crime that predates...

No, you do not need to pull and submit your own criminal history printout with the visitation application. The facility runs their own background check using the personal information you provide on the application. That is standard practice across most correctional facilities in California and nationally. They have direct access to law enforcement databases and conduct the check themselves rather than relying on documentation you provide. What matters is that the information you put on the application is accurate and complete....

The rules are strict on this and the answer in most cases is no, at least not through the standard visitor approval process. Correctional facilities run every visitor applicant through a background check that flags prior felony convictions. A former inmate with a felony record will be denied through the standard approval process regardless of the relationship to the person inside. That is the baseline rule across virtually every state and federal system. The exception that sometimes exists is for family members....

Yes, inmates at Leath Correctional Institution in South Carolina are paid for their work assignments, including kitchen duty. The pay is real but the amounts are startlingly low by any outside standard. Prison wages in South Carolina, like most state systems, run from a few cents to roughly forty cents per hour depending on the assignment and the skill level required. Kitchen work is considered one of the more demanding jobs inside, with early morning hours, physical demands, and the responsibility...

Prepare yourself mentally for the longest and most disorienting day you have experienced in a long time. The reception center process is not a quick check-in. It is a full intake that can stretch across most of a day, sometimes longer, as the facility processes you through a series of steps at their pace, not yours. You will spend a significant amount of time waiting. Waiting to be processed, waiting to be photographed, waiting to be assigned, waiting for paperwork to...

There is a waiting period, and it is standard across virtually every correctional facility in the country including Groveland. It is not specific to that facility and it is not a punishment. It is simply the Admissions and Orientation process that every newly arrived inmate goes through before privileges become available. During A&O, which typically runs anywhere from a few days to a couple of weeks depending on the facility and how smoothly intake moves, the inmate is being processed into...

In most cases no, and the reason is a standard policy that applies broadly across correctional facilities rather than anything specific to the individual situation. Having a prior felony conviction is one of the most common automatic disqualifiers in the visitation approval process. Facilities run background checks on everyone who applies to visit, and a prior felony, especially one that involved incarceration, raises immediate concerns about the nature of the relationship, potential security risks, and whether the visit could facilitate activity...

Most new inmates go through an orientation period before phone and visitation access is activated. At Florida state facilities, that process typically takes about a week. During that window, the inmate is being classified, assigned to a housing unit, and briefed on facility rules and programs. Phone lists, approved visitor lists, and commissary accounts are all set up as part of that process. There is a way to potentially speed things up. Inmates who are proactive about communicating with their counselor...

This is worth pursuing directly and the mailroom supervisor is exactly the right person to call. There are several legitimate reasons mail gets held or rejected at a correctional facility, and knowing which one applies is the first step toward fixing it. The most common causes include a missing or incorrect inmate ID number on the envelope, a name that does not match exactly how it appears in the facility's system, content that was flagged during inspection, or a sender whose...