Parenting From Prison in California
California did something almost no other state has done: it made the phone calls free. Since January 1, 2023, every audio call placed from a California state prison is free of charge to the incarcerated person and to the family receiving it. No cost per minute. No cap on the number of calls. Just the 15-minute time limit per call and whatever the institution sets for telephone hours. The law is called the Keep Families Connected Act, and for a parent inside a California prison, it changes the entire shape of the question.
The question used to be: can I afford to call my kids today? In California, that question is gone. The question now is: what am I going to say when I do?
That is a better problem to have, and this guide is about how to answer it well. Because free calls are only as valuable as what happens during them. And a parent who has unlimited access to a phone but no idea how to use that time as a parent is not better connected to their children than one who made every limited minute count. The tool got better. The skill still has to develop.
Free Calls: What the Law Actually Changed
Senate Bill 1008, the Keep Families Connected Act, passed in California and took effect January 1, 2023. Under it, CDCR institutions provide no-cost domestic and international audio phone calls to incarcerated people and their families. There is no monthly minute cap. The only limits are the 15-minute per-call time limit and the calling hours set by each institution.
What this means practically: if your child gets home from school at 3:30 and you have access to the phone at 3:30, you can call. If the call drops and you want to call back, you can. If you missed yesterday because of a lockdown and you want to make up for it, you can call twice today. The financial barrier that in every other state forces families to ration contact with an incarcerated parent is not there in California. That is a profound change, and most parents inside have not yet fully absorbed how to use it.
**Setting up the account.** Even though calls are free, your family still needs to set up a ConnectNetwork account to receive calls from CDCR. Visit ConnectNetwork.com to register, set up an AdvancePay account (no funds required for CDCR calls), and add your facility and your loved one as a contact. The same login credentials work for the GettingOut platform, which handles the messaging and video features on the tablet side.
**Platform note.** California awarded a new telecom contract to Securus Technologies in February 2025, replacing the previous ViaPath platform. The transition is rolling out institution by institution. Until your specific institution makes the switch, ViaPath remains the platform. Once the transition happens at your institution, families will need to use Securus. If your loved one transfers to an institution still on ViaPath, the family returns to that platform temporarily. It sounds complicated, and it is a bit, but the free-call policy does not change with the platform switch.
Making Unlimited Free Calls Count: The Real Work
Here is a thing I learned the hard way about phone calls: having them is not the same as using them well. I had ten minutes a day split across six kids and a wife, and I learned to make every minute feel like it was meant for the person on the other end of the line. California parents have more time than that available to them. The challenge is to use it with at least as much intention.
The 15-minute limit per call is actually useful. It creates a natural frame that prevents calls from becoming unfocused. In 15 minutes you can ask one real question about a child's actual life, hear their answer, go a few exchanges deep, and end with something that matters. That is not nothing. That is a real conversation.
What you want to avoid is the call that functions as administrative catch-up. The one where the first five minutes is logistics, the next five is checking in on five people in a row, and the last five is someone who needed the whole call getting three minutes of fractured attention. Rotate your children. Give each one a call that is theirs alone when you can manage it. A ten-minute call that belongs to your nine-year-old is more valuable to her than twenty minutes where she shared you with three siblings and the topic kept changing.
Before you pick up the phone, know what you are going to say. Have one question ready that proves you were thinking about this child specifically since your last call. Not "how is school" but "did you end up getting to try out for the team the way you said you were going to?" That specificity, that evidence that you held onto what they told you, is the whole thing. It tells them their words mattered. It tells them they matter. That is parenting.
Tablets, Messaging, and Free Video Calls Every Two Weeks
California state prisons provide tablets to incarcerated people, and those tablets do more than the phone can. Through the GettingOut platform, you can exchange messages with approved contacts. Incoming messages cost the family $0.05 each and have a 2,000-character limit. They can also send photos and e-cards. Your responses come from your trust account. Our send money guide explains how families deposit to the trust account.
The tablet also gives you something the phone does not: 15 minutes of free video calling every two weeks. Free, including the video. Set that call up deliberately. Video is different from audio in a way that is hard to articulate until you are in it. The child who sees your face sees that you are okay in a way the voice alone does not always convey. For young children especially, the video call is closer to a visit than a phone call is. Use both slots every two weeks without fail.
The messaging between video calls and phone calls creates a rhythm of contact that children can feel even on the days when nothing dramatic is communicated. A message that arrives on a Wednesday that says I was thinking about you today and I hope your presentation went well is not a major event. It is a stitch in the fabric of your relationship, and enough of those stitches is what holds things together across a long sentence.
Visitation: Three Days a Week and the Family Visit Option
California's in-person visiting policy is better than most states': every adult CDCR institution offers in-person contact visits on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, scheduled online through the Department's Visitation Scheduling Application. The background check process requires Form CDCR 106, which can be submitted online or by mail. Expect the background check to take approximately four to six weeks from submission of the required documentation. Do not wait to start this process.
For children visiting, the rules have a specific requirement: a minor must be accompanied by an approved adult visitor, which means a parent or legal guardian who is on the approved list, or must have notarized written permission from a parent or guardian accompanied by a certified birth certificate. The notarized letter must carry an original notary stamp and be updated each calendar year. If your children's other parent is the one bringing them to visit, that parent needs to be on the approved visitor list. Plan for this. It requires paperwork on both ends.
California also has something almost no other state offers: the **family visit**. Under California Code of Regulations Title 15, Section 3177, qualifying incarcerated people can have extended overnight visits with immediate family members, including their children, in apartment-like settings within the institution. These visits typically run 30 to 40 hours. They are not available at all institutions and not available to everyone, but if you qualify, the family visit is one of the most powerful parenting tools available anywhere in the American prison system. Ask your case manager whether you are eligible and what the process looks like for your facility.
Call CIRIS at 1-800-374-8474 before any planned visit to confirm the facility is open and the visit has not been canceled due to lockdown or other circumstances. Transfers happen without notice and can affect everything.
Federal Prison in California: BOP Infrastructure
California has a significant federal prison population across facilities including Lompoc FCI and USP, Dublin FCI (the federal women's facility that has been the subject of significant reform efforts), Terminal Island FCI near Los Angeles, Victorville USP and FCI in the high desert, and others. If you are in federal custody, the communication infrastructure is the national BOP standard and it does not have the free-call benefit that California state prisons offer.
**Phone.** Three hundred minutes per month, with an additional 100 minutes in November and December. Each call is capped at 15 minutes and costs $0.06 per minute under the FCC's January 2025 rate reduction. The contrast with CDCR is sharp. If you are in a California federal facility after having been in state prison, or if your family is used to the free state system, the cost structure is different and the minute limit is real. Every minute has to work.
**TRULINCS and CorrLinks.** BOP email costs $0.05 per minute of compose time on your end. Up to 30 approved contacts. Families send emails through CorrLinks at no cost. No attachments, no photos, only text. Use this for the letters that could not fit in a 15-minute call. Use it for the message that needed a day and a half to write because getting it right for your teenager mattered that much.
ICE Detention in California: The Uncertainty Layer
California has significant ICE detention capacity at facilities including the Adelanto ICE Processing Center in the high desert, Otay Mesa Detention Center near San Diego, and the Yuba County Jail operating under an ICE contract. If you are in civil immigration detention, the legal framework is different from criminal incarceration, the timeline is uncertain, and the phone access is governed by ICE detention standards rather than California law. The free-call benefit does not apply.
Phone access in ICE detention facilities typically means prepaid calling cards or specific platforms contracted by the facility, and rates can be higher than in criminal facilities. Mail access follows standard postal rules. The uncertainty of your situation, whether you will be transferred, whether your case will resolve, can be felt by your children even when you do not put words to it.
The most important thing you can do from ICE detention is make the contact consistent and make the tone calm. Call on a schedule your children can predict. Write on that same schedule. Every act of contact tells your child two things: you are okay, and they are the reason you keep showing up. That is true even from detention, even from uncertainty, even from 300 miles away.
Use our California inmate search to help your family track your location if you are transferred, because ICE transfers happen with little notice.
County Jails: 58 Counties, 58 Systems
California has 58 counties and 58 separate county jail systems. Los Angeles County, San Bernardino, Alameda, Sacramento, San Diego, Fresno, and the rest each set their own rules for phones, mail, and visitation. Most large counties now use a combination of phone and video visitation through providers like Securus, ViaPath, or facility-specific platforms.
Note that the free-call benefit is a CDCR policy and does not automatically extend to county jails. Most county jails charge for calls. If your family is receiving calls from a county facility that ViaPath also serves, they may be charged even if they have a CDCR free-call account set up. Confirm the cost structure with the specific facility before assuming calls are free.
The county jail window is typically the most chaotic period for families, and it is also the period when children are most acutely adjusting to the new reality. Move fast: find out the platform, get the account funded, and make the first call happen as quickly as you can. A missed week in this period is a long time in a child's experience of absence.
The Letter: What No Technology Replaces
California gives you better technology than any other state: free calls, free video every two weeks, tablet messaging. And still, the handwritten letter does something none of those channels can. It gives the child something to hold.
Write each letter to one child and make it about that child's specific life. Reference what you know is happening in their world right now. Ask a real question. Give them something to respond to. The letter that asks "what are you most proud of this month, and write me back about it" creates a correspondence. A correspondence is a relationship that runs even when the calls do not.
For younger children who cannot yet read well, tell your co-parent or caregiver to read the letters aloud. The child who cannot decode every word still understands that those pages came from their parent, that someone sat down and chose the words only for them. Draw in the margins. Create a maze. Write a riddle you will solve together in the next letter. These are the things children keep for thirty years.
For the Family at Home
California's free-call policy removes the financial friction, but the emotional friction still runs underneath everything. The co-parent or caregiver managing the household is exhausted, grieving, and often angry, and those feelings are legitimate. They are not the children's burden to carry.
Every time a caregiver hands the phone to a child without a comment about why the call is happening, they are doing something that protects that child. Every time a letter gets read without editorial framing, the connection between parent and child is preserved. This is hard. It costs something. It is also the most important thing the person on the outside can do for the children who are watching both adults to understand how they are supposed to feel about all of this.
California gives incarcerated parents more tools to stay connected than almost anywhere else in the country. What happens with those tools depends on both sides of the phone call, and both sides of the life a child is living.
FAQ
**Are phone calls really free from California state prisons?** Yes. Under SB 1008, the Keep Families Connected Act effective January 1, 2023, all audio calls from CDCR state institutions are free of charge to the incarcerated person and their family. There is no monthly minute cap. Each call has a 15-minute time limit, and calling hours are set by each institution.
**What platform does California use, and is it changing?** California awarded a new telecom contract to Securus Technologies in February 2025, replacing ViaPath. The transition is rolling out institution by institution. Families use ConnectNetwork for trust account deposits and GettingOut for tablet messaging and video. The same credentials work for both. If your loved one transfers between institutions during the transition, you may need to switch platforms.
**How do I set up my family to receive free calls?** Your family creates a ConnectNetwork AdvancePay account at ConnectNetwork.com or by calling ViaPath's CDCR-dedicated customer service at 1-866-607-6006. No funds need to be loaded for CDCR calls. Once the account is set up, they add the CDCR facility and your incarcerated loved one as a contact.
**Can my children visit, and what do they need?** Yes. In-person visiting runs Friday through Sunday at all adult CDCR institutions. Children must be accompanied by an approved adult visitor or have notarized written permission from a parent or guardian plus a certified birth certificate. The notarized letter must carry an original stamp and be updated each calendar year.
**What is a California family visit?** Under California regulations, qualifying incarcerated people can have extended overnight visits with immediate family members, including their children, in apartment-like settings within the institution. These visits typically run 30 to 40 hours. Eligibility and availability vary by institution. Ask your case manager whether you qualify.
**Do the free calls apply to county jails and ICE detention in California?** No. The free-call benefit is a CDCR state prison policy. County jails and ICE detention facilities set their own rates, which typically involve costs. Confirm the cost structure with the specific facility before assuming any call is free.
**How is the federal system different from CDCR in California?** Federal inmates at California BOP facilities are capped at 300 minutes per month, with 15-minute call caps at $0.06 per minute under 2025 FCC rates. There is no free-call benefit. TRULINCS email through CorrLinks costs $0.05 per minute on the inmate's end and is free for families. Up to 30 approved contacts, text only, no photo attachments.