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

A government-issued passport from your home country is generally accepted as valid identification for visitor applications at Texas Department of Criminal Justice facilities including Pam Lychner. It establishes your identity with the same authority as any other government document and should satisfy the ID requirement for the visitor approval process. That said, confirm this directly with the facility before making the trip. Call Pam Lychner's visiting office at 281-454-5036 and ask specifically whether a foreign passport is accepted as the primary...

Some facilities do make accommodations for long-distance visitors and Wheeler Correctional in Alamo, Georgia, is worth calling directly to ask. The Georgia Department of Corrections leaves certain visitation decisions to individual facility discretion, and a 217-mile drive is the kind of documented hardship that occasionally results in extended visit windows or priority scheduling. The right person to speak with is the warden's office or the visitation coordinator at Wheeler. Call during regular business hours, explain your distance, and ask directly whether...

In California, the legal landscape around marijuana has shifted dramatically since legalization, and that shift has filtered into how prison disciplinary systems treat it, though it is still contraband inside a correctional facility regardless of its legal status on the outside. Additional prison time specifically for a marijuana possession infraction is unlikely in most California cases. The disciplinary response is typically handled internally rather than through new criminal charges, particularly for simple possession of a small amount. The penalty lands more...

Being placed at a treatment facility does not change the underlying sentence calculation. The East Texas Treatment Facility operates under the same TDCJ rules and Texas law that govern every other state correctional institution, and the standard 85% requirement applies regardless of the type of facility. That means your person will serve about 85% of their total sentence before becoming eligible for release, assuming they maintain a clean disciplinary record throughout their time at the treatment facility. The nature of the...

There is no way to know for sure. He will be allowed to write you, so ask him why he's there and for how long. I was in the SHU for one day, every minute felt like it was an hour - it is hell. I had my DHO hearing and was luckily released back into gen pop. There was another guy in there for eight months for having a cell phone. Rumor was he got a year in solitary and then...

Blackout? Or are you referring to lock down?  A lockdown in prison basically means that you are confined to a cell for 24 hours a day. There is no outside recreation, church, library, school, or work for most individuals. The only people that work during a lock down are what are called critical workers for jobs that are considered essential to running the prison. Some examples are kitchen workers, infirmary workers, some "orderly" positions that clean (sweep, mop, showers) the housing units....

No. Accidentally declining a call or contacting the prison from your end does not put your inmate's phone privileges at risk. Phone privilege loss is tied entirely to the inmate's own conduct, not to actions taken by people on the outside. In Arkansas and everywhere else, inmates lose phone access for specific infractions they commit themselves. Saying something prohibited on a recorded call, causing a disturbance while using the phone or waiting in line, misusing or damaging the phone equipment, or...

Video visitation has become increasingly common in correctional facilities over the past decade, driven largely by private companies that secure exclusive contracts with individual jails and prisons to provide the service. Whether it is available to your inmate depends entirely on whether the specific facility has signed one of those contracts. County jails have been among the earliest and most aggressive adopters of video visitation, in part because the technology allows facilities to reduce the staffing and security costs associated with...

The most likely explanation is that your son is in the SHU, the Special Housing Unit, which is the federal Bureau of Prisons term for disciplinary or administrative segregation. When an inmate is placed in the SHU, privileges are significantly restricted across the board. Phone access is typically suspended or severely limited, often reduced to one fifteen-minute call per week. Commissary is restricted. Movement is essentially nonexistent. The fact that video visits are still available while phone calls are not is...

A major disciplinary infraction close to a release date is a serious setback, but the exact impact depends on what the offense was, whether it constitutes a new criminal charge, and how the facility classifies it through their disciplinary process. On the release date, a major infraction can affect things in a few different ways. If it results in loss of good time credits, the release date moves back by however much credit is taken away. If the infraction is severe...

Absolutely, and it is one of the more straightforward paths to the hole that exists in any correctional facility. Guards are there to maintain order, and an inmate verbally assaulting a staff member is a direct challenge to that order. It does not matter whether the words were said in anger, frustration, or as a heat of the moment reaction. Disrespecting or threatening a corrections officer is a serious disciplinary infraction at every facility, and the standard response is removal from...

CMCF is located on 171 acres and includes thirteen housing units with a capacity of 3,557 beds.  Offenders sentenced to the Mississippi Department of Corrections are brought to CMCF where they are processed through the Receiving and Classification unit.   Every level of custody is represented and depending on where your inmate is designated (and a year sentence is usually minimum or low unless the inmate has violence in their history), you will relaxed visitation, not through a glass divider. ...

Visitation, Phone Calls and Mail - Please call social work at (315) 435-1421 to schedule a visit. Official Visitor  - (anyone officially involved in the resident’s case—law guardian, Probation Officer, Case worker, OCFS worker, etc.) Any scheduled time approved by facility social worker or Senior Counselor Parent/Guardian Sunday: 9:30 AM — 12:30 PM  1:30 PM — 4:30 PM Wednesday: 6:00 PM — 8:30 PM  Phone Calls Parents and guardians are encouraged to contact the Social Work department regarding all levels of communication with their child. The social worker assigned to a...