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

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...

Yes, that is exactly correct and you have it set up the right way. Your personal phone number is the destination, meaning the number where you actually want to receive the calls. The InmateAid number that was emailed to you is the routing number, which is the number your inmate dials at the facility to reach you at the lower rate. When your inmate dials the InmateAid number, the call routes through to your personal number at the discounted rate rather...

The BOP line from InmateAid is local to the facility the inmate is in. The inmate has to pay for each call from their cell coming out of their Trulincs account - they use their money is for calls, emails, and commissary. The 15-minute call to your number is $3.15, the call to the local number is $0.90. You're saving $2.25 per call simply by using our local number (which rings to your long distance number). Our $8.95 fee to rent this...

The most important ingredient is one that no one outside of her can provide: her own genuine desire to change. All of the love, housing, financial help, and family support in the world will not override a lack of internal motivation. People who stay clean after release do so because they want a different life badly enough to work for it every day. People who return to using do so because on some level the pull of the old life...

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...

USP McCreary is a federal Bureau of Prisons facility, and InmateAid offers several services that make a real difference for inmates and their families there. On the phone side, federal inmates at McCreary get 300 minutes per month through the BOP system, with that allotment bumping up to 400 minutes in November and December for the holidays. Every call costs either $0.06 per minute for local numbers or $0.21 per minute for long distance numbers, with the money coming out of...

There is no guaranteed timeline, and that uncertainty is one of the more frustrating parts of waiting for a program placement from inside a county jail. The STAR Community Justice Center in Portsmouth, Ohio is a residential community-based correctional facility that takes referrals from county jails and courts across the region. Getting there from Ross County Jail depends on several factors that are largely outside your person's control. The first is readiness on the facility's end. The STAR program has a set...

The honest answer is that it depends entirely on the judge, and that judge is not going to be in a generous mood. Here is the reality of the situation. When a judge grants probation, they are extending trust. They looked at the person in front of them and made a decision to give them an alternative to incarceration. A probation violation, even a first one, and even for something as relatively minor as a small amount of marijuana, tells that...

Visits at a halfway house can begin as early as the first scheduled visitation period after arrival, which is significantly faster than anything available inside a correctional facility. The environment at a halfway house is fundamentally different from prison visitation. There is no glass partition, no pat-down, no rigid time limit enforced by corrections officers watching over every interaction. The atmosphere is relaxed because the halfway house operates on the understanding that residents are in the final stretch of reentry and...

Not at that facility, and the reason is practical rather than arbitrary. St. Louis City Justice Center is a short-term holding facility. It houses people who are awaiting trial, awaiting sentencing, or serving short sentences before being transferred to a longer-term facility. Short-term city and county jails simply do not have the administrative infrastructure or the policy framework for inmate marriages. There is no chaplain program set up for ceremonies, no warden protocol for approving marriage requests, and no precedent for...

The calling rules depend on whether he is in a state or federal facility, and the difference is significant. In most state prisons, inmates in "gen-pop" or general population can make calls as often as they want during the designated phone hours for their unit, as long as there is money in their account to cover the cost. There is no monthly minute cap. If the funds are there, the calls can happen daily or multiple times a day. The limiting factor...