Parenting From Prison in Arkansas

INMATEAID EDITORIAL ARTICLE

Schema: Article + FAQPage

Internal links: Arkansas inmate search, send money, visitation guide (ADC), Staying Connected hub, Arkansas reentry resources

SOURCING NOTE: ADC phone (Securus Technologies since July 2015; on-demand calling, no advance scheduling required per current ADC visitation page; all calls monitored/recorded except attorney; no three-way calling or call forwarding = loss of privileges; Pre-Pay Phone Service Account funded online; no paper money orders after May 31 2025); video visitation ($5.00 per 30-minute session as of January 2025; through Securus; recording/photographing prohibited - 1st violation 1-year suspension, subsequent = permanent loss; must be approved for regular visitation first; Securus Customer Service 877-578-3658); eMessaging + tablets (Securus SecureView Tablet Program; eMessaging service both listed on ADC Online Services page); money (online deposits for Trust Account or Pre-Pay Phone; Inmate Deposit Services online); visitation (visitors must have prior approval; written info provided to inmates on arrival; inmate responsible for notifying family of approval/denial; initial assignment min 60 days at Varner/Cummins/Grimes/Ouachita River for males; during intake limited phone access - portable phone for legal calls + PREA line only; step-down barracks phone use allowed; special visits for approved visitors 300+ miles away, any 2 weekdays, 24 hours advance, no holidays); mail (standard inspection; cards max 5"x7"; no stickers/metal/magazines/drawing tablets/newspapers/phone cards); BOP federal Arkansas (Forrest City FCI low + medium - one of largest federal complexes; BOP TRULINCS/CorrLinks 300 min/month, 15-min call cap, $0.06/min audio per FCC Jan 2025, TRULINCS $0.05/min compose, 30 contacts max, no attachments).

SAFETY/EDITORIAL GUARDRAILS: Voice = knowledgeable formerly-incarcerated parent, warm, direct, personal. Arkansas structural hook = the contrast between the 60-day intake silence (letters only) and the on-demand calling that opens after; on-demand calling is Arkansas's genuinely distinctive feature. Scott's firsthand woven as narrative. No em dashes, no smart quotes, no double hyphens.

Parenting From Prison in Arkansas

Arkansas gives you something that a lot of states do not: once you are past the initial intake period and settled at your permanent unit, you can call your children at any time during telephone hours without scheduling in advance. No appointment, no coordination window, no hoping the slot you reserved matches the moment your kid gets home from school. If you have minutes, you call. That matters more than it might sound.

But first you have to get through the intake period, and during intake your phone access is almost nothing. Understanding the shape of those two phases, the silence and then the opening, is where parenting from an Arkansas prison actually begins.

The First 60 Days: When Letters Are Your Only Tool

When you arrive at an Arkansas Division of Correction facility, you go through an intake process that typically lasts a minimum of 60 days at one of the designated initial assignment units: Varner, Cummins, Grimes, or Ouachita River for male inmates. During that intake period, your access to the telephone is limited to a portable phone for legal calls and for reporting under the Prison Rape Elimination Act. You cannot call your children from intake. The phone channel is not open yet.

This is not a period of silence unless you let it be. It is a period of letters.

Before you went in, or as early as possible after arrival, you need to get your address to your family. The institution will give you written information about visiting procedures and contact details. Make sure that information gets to the people who need it, because the letter they are waiting to receive from you can only arrive if they know where to send the reply.

Write as soon as you can. Write to each child individually. Not one letter to "all the kids" but one envelope with one name on it for each child old enough to read or to have a letter read to them. The letter you write in that first week of intake is the first piece of evidence your children receive that you are still paying attention. Make it personal, make it warm, and do not make it about prison. Make it about them.

The ADC does have rules about what mail can contain. Cards cannot be larger than 5 inches by 7 inches. No stickers, no metal, no magazines, no drawing tablets as separate items, no newspapers, no phone cards, no internet printouts. A letter with hand-drawn content is fine. A drawing worked directly into the letter is fine. Know the rules before you put something in an envelope, because a returned letter in those first weeks is a gap your child will feel.

Once You Are at Your Permanent Unit: On-Demand Calling

After the 60-day intake period ends and you move to your permanent assignment, the phone channel opens and it opens with a feature worth appreciating. Arkansas Division of Correction has moved to on-demand calling, which means you do not have to schedule calls in advance. During telephone hours at your unit, you can initiate a call whenever the phone is available and you have approved contacts with funded accounts.

That changes the rhythm of parenting by phone in a real way. It means if you know your daughter gets home from school at 3:30, you can try to call at 3:35 on a Tuesday without having to have reserved that slot three days ago. It means the spontaneous call is possible in a way it is not in states with advance scheduling requirements. It means you can respond to something urgent your family sent in a message rather than waiting for a prescheduled window that is twelve hours away.

**Phone setup.** Arkansas uses Securus Technologies for phone services, the same provider the state has used since 2015. Your family creates a prepaid account and funds it online through the ADC's online deposit service. No paper money orders are accepted after May 31, 2025, so the account has to be set up digitally. Our send money guide walks through how to do that. Once the account is funded and your family's numbers are on your approved list, calls can happen.

All calls are recorded and monitored except calls to attorneys. Three-way calling and call forwarding are not permitted and will result in loss of telephone privileges. Do not attempt either. The cost of losing the phone channel for parenting purposes is far greater than whatever the reason seemed to be in the moment.

Video Visitation and the $5 Session

Arkansas offers video visitation through Securus at $5.00 per 30-minute session as of January 2025. You must be approved for regular visitation before you can apply for video visitation. Once approved, Securus handles the scheduling and billing for video visits, and their customer service line is (877) 578-3658 if your family has technical questions about setup.

For children who are old enough to have a conversation on a screen, the video visit is something the phone call is not: they can see your face. They can see that you are okay. They can see you react when they tell you something. For young children who still connect faces to presence in a more visceral way than older children or adults, a video call can close a distance that the voice alone leaves open.

One rule is absolute and the consequences are severe: the recording or photographing of a video visit is prohibited. A first violation results in a suspension of visitation privileges for a minimum of one year. A subsequent violation results in permanent loss. Make sure everyone on the outside who is going to join a video call understands this rule before the call begins. The rule is not the facility being unreasonable. The rule is the price of keeping the channel open, and it is worth keeping.

The Securus SecureView Tablet and eMessaging

Arkansas offers the Securus SecureView Tablet Program in its facilities, which gives incarcerated parents access to electronic messaging, and the ADC lists its eMessaging service as one of its online services. These platforms allow a form of contact that fills the space between the phone calls, something that runs on a different rhythm.

A short message that arrives on a Tuesday afternoon that says I was thinking about you today, I heard you have a test tomorrow, I know you know the material because you have been working hard at this does not require a scheduled phone window. It lands when it lands, and the child who reads it on the way home from school carries something into the evening that they would not have had otherwise.

For your family: fund the commissary account so that tablet access and messaging remain available. The account that keeps the calls going is the same account that keeps the messaging going. Keeping it funded is the infrastructure of connection.

Federal Prison in Arkansas: Forrest City and the BOP

Arkansas is home to one of the larger federal prison complexes in the country. Forrest City houses both a low-security facility and a medium-security facility and holds a significant federal population. If you are in federal custody at Forrest City or another BOP facility assigned to Arkansas, the communication infrastructure is the same national BOP standard used in every federal prison in the country.

**Phone.** Three hundred minutes per month, with an additional 100 minutes in November and December. Each call is limited to 15 minutes and costs $0.06 per minute under the FCC's January 2025 rate reduction. Five hours of calls a month divided across children and a partner who is managing everything alone requires deliberate distribution. Know before you dial which child you are calling and what you are going to say to them. A call that serves everyone a little serves no one enough. A call that belongs to one child for five focused minutes serves that child.

**TRULINCS and CorrLinks.** The BOP email platform, accessed by families through CorrLinks, costs $0.05 per minute on your end and nothing on the family's end. You can have up to 30 approved contacts. No attachments of any kind, only text. That limitation matters for parents who want to send drawings or receive a photo of a school recital. You cannot, not through this channel. What you can do is write, and what you write can be exactly what a child needs in a way that a hurried 15-minute call cannot always be.

County Jails: The Pretrial Window

Arkansas's county jails, in Pulaski, Washington, Benton, Sebastian, and Craighead counties among the largest, each run their own systems. Providers vary. Some use Securus, some use other vendors. In-person visiting rules differ county to county.

What does not differ is what your children need from you during this period. The county jail window is often the most destabilizing for families, because the situation is uncertain and the communication channels are being set up from scratch at the worst possible moment. Move fast: find out what phone provider the facility uses, get that to your family, get the account funded, and make the first call count.

If the county jail has video visitation, use it. For young children, seeing your face in the first week after your arrival somewhere they do not understand can do more for their sense of security than a dozen phone calls without video. The technology is not always beautiful. It does not have to be.

Making the On-Demand Call Count

You have the on-demand calling feature. You have access during telephone hours. What you do with those minutes is the whole story.

Before you pick up the phone, decide which child you are calling today and what you are going to say. Not "how are you" but a real question about something real. The name of the teacher whose assignment is due. The friend situation that was unresolved last week. The thing your child mentioned that you have been thinking about since. That level of specificity, that proof that you were listening and that you remembered, is what turns a check-in into a connection.

Ten minutes is not very much time. It is enough time to make one child feel that they matter more than anything else in your world right now, which is exactly true and exactly what they need to hear expressed through the specific details of their specific life. Do not share the call with four siblings and spend the time on logistics. Make it belong to one child and let the others have their own.

Rotate. A child who does not get a call this week needs a letter this week instead. The rhythm of contact matters as much as the volume. A child who can predict when they will hear from you feels safer than a child who never knows when or if the call will come. Predictability is a form of parenting.

The Letter: What It Does That the Call Cannot

Arkansas's initial assignment period puts a spotlight on something that is true for the entire sentence, not just the first 60 days: the letter does something the phone call cannot. The call is real-time. The letter is something a child can carry.

Write each letter to one child and make it about that child's specific world. Reference what is happening in school right now. Ask a question that requires thought, not a fill-in-the-blank answer. Give them something to write back about. A child who writes back is a child engaged in a relationship, not just a recipient of contact.

Put something in the letter that proves you were thinking of them specifically: a word search you built using their spelling words, a drawing of a place you plan to take them when you are home, a riddle that fits a running joke between the two of you. These small specific acts of attention are the evidence children hold onto. They are the things that end up folded inside a drawer and found fifteen years later.

For children who cannot yet read well, tell your co-parent or caregiver to read the letters aloud. A child who cannot decode the words still understands that the pages came from their parent, that someone sat down and chose words and drew pictures and thought only of them. That understanding is real even before the reading is.

For the Family at Home

The caregiver holding things together in Arkansas is dealing with everything at once: the children's daily needs, the financial reality, the grief of the absence, and the administrative demands of keeping the communication channels running. The on-demand calling is one gift Arkansas gives this situation, because it removes one scheduling burden. But the system still requires a funded account, an approved visitation application, and active management of who is on the contact list.

Set up the Securus account early and keep it funded. Make sure the contact list includes numbers for each child who is old enough to have a phone call. Keep the ADC website bookmarked for deposit access, since paper money orders are no longer accepted.

And then do the harder thing, the thing no administrative guide can mandate: keep the incarcerated parent's voice in the children's lives as something they welcome, not something they have been taught to resent. The anger between adults is real and it is valid. The children did not create it and they should not carry it. Every time a caregiver picks up the phone and hands it to a child without editorial comment about why the call is happening, they are doing something protective for that child's future. The child needs a parent on both ends of the line. Give them that, even when it costs you something.

FAQ

**How do I call my family from an Arkansas state prison?** Arkansas uses Securus Technologies for phone services. Once you are past the intake period and at your permanent unit, you can make on-demand calls during telephone hours without advance scheduling. Your family needs a funded prepaid account set up online through the ADC's deposit service. Paper money orders are no longer accepted after May 31, 2025.

**Can I use the phone during the 60-day intake period?** During the initial intake period, phone access is limited to a portable phone for legal calls and for PREA reporting only. Regular personal phone calls are not permitted until you move to a permanent unit. Use the intake period to write letters to your children.

**How much does video visitation cost in Arkansas?** As of January 2025, video visitation through Securus costs $5.00 per 30-minute session. You must be approved for regular visitation before you can apply for video visitation. Contact Securus Customer Service at (877) 578-3658 for technical assistance.

**Can I send drawings or artwork to my children from an Arkansas prison?** You can include hand-drawn content directly in a letter. Cards must be no larger than 5 inches by 7 inches. No stickers, metal items, magazines, separate drawing tablets, newspapers, or phone cards are permitted in the mail. Anything you draw directly on the letter or within the letter pages is generally acceptable. Confirm with your case manager for your specific facility.

**What is the Securus SecureView Tablet Program?** The Securus SecureView Tablet Program provides incarcerated individuals access to electronic messaging, educational content, and other services. Through the tablet, you can send and receive messages with approved contacts. Keep your commissary account funded to maintain access.

**What is the federal situation at Forrest City?** Federal inmates at Forrest City FCI (low and medium) are capped at 300 phone minutes per month, with individual calls limited to 15 minutes at $0.06 per minute under the 2025 FCC rates. Email through TRULINCS and CorrLinks costs $0.05 per minute on the inmate's end and is free for families outside. Up to 30 approved contacts, text only, no attachments.

**The caregiver is not making it easy for the kids to take my calls. What can I do?** Write directly to each child through the mail. Your letters arrive without requiring the caregiver's active cooperation in the same way a phone call does. Be consistent and be patient. Over time, consistency is the most powerful argument you can make, not with the caregiver but with your children, who are watching and building their own understanding of who showed up for them.

[Affiliate handling: Product-light parenting spoke - NO external affiliate links. Internal CTAs only (standard 5): Arkansas inmate search, send money (fund Securus/commissary/Trust Account), visitation guide ADC, Staying Connected hub, Arkansas reentry resources. SOURCING: ADC phone (Securus Technologies since July 2015; on-demand calling no advance scheduling required; monitored/recorded except attorney; no three-way/call forwarding = loss of privileges; Pre-Pay Phone online; no paper money orders after May 31 2025); video visitation ($5.00 per 30-minute session Jan 2025; Securus; no recording = 1-year suspension then permanent loss; must be approved for regular visitation first; Securus 877-578-3658); eMessaging + tablets (Securus SecureView Tablet Program; eMessaging service; ADC Online Services page); visitation (must have prior approval; written info on arrival; inmate notifies family of approval/denial; intake min 60 days at Varner/Cummins/Grimes/Ouachita River males; during intake limited phone = portable phone legal + PREA only; step-down barracks phone allowed; special visits 300+ miles any 2 weekdays 24-hour advance no holidays); mail (standard inspection; cards max 5"x7"; no stickers/metal/magazines/drawing tablets/newspapers/phone cards); BOP Arkansas (Forrest City FCI low + medium; BOP TRULINCS/CorrLinks 300 min/month + 100 Nov-Dec, 15-min cap, $0.06/min audio per FCC Jan 2025, TRULINCS $0.05/min compose, 30 contacts max, no attachments). GUARDRAILS: no em dashes, no smart quotes, no double hyphens; warm/direct/personal voice; 60-day intake gap + on-demand calling as structural arc; Scott firsthand woven as narrative. NOTE for Poorwa: verify on-demand calling is current per ADC visitation page; verify $5.00 video session rate still current; verify Securus still ADC provider; verify no paper money orders post-May 2025 is still current; len()/character check before publish.]