Inmate Video Visitation in Idaho

If someone you love is locked up in Idaho, video is one of the ways you can see their face without driving across the state, or in a lot of cases, across two states. But video in Idaho is not one system with one set of rules. It depends entirely on where the person is being held, and Idaho has a wrinkle most states don't: a large share of its prison population is sitting in Arizona right now.

Idaho splits custody three ways, and each one handles video differently. The state prison system (IDOC) runs the long-term facilities. County and city jails handle people awaiting trial or serving short sentences. And federal and immigration custody operate on their own rules entirely. Figure out which bucket your person is in first, because everything else flows from that.

Do Idaho state prisons offer video visitation?

Mostly, no, and this is where Idaho surprises people. IDOC's family visitation is built around in-person visits at its facilities, not scheduled family video calls. The exception is close custody. At facilities like the Idaho State Correctional Center (ISCC) near Kuna, certain close-custody housing units do their visitation by video rather than in person, because of how those units are managed. So for some residents video is the only way to visit, and for most others it isn't offered at all for family.

IDOC's vendor for the visitation system is ICSolutions. Every visitor, whether the visit is in person or video, has to be an IDOC-approved visitor, registered with ICSolutions, and listed on the specific visit. The approval process runs through a background check and a visiting application submitted to the facility where the person is housed. Plan on roughly two to four weeks for that to clear.

The thing to understand is that IDOC treats in-person as the default and video as the exception tied to custody level, which is the opposite of how a lot of county jails work. Do not assume your person has video access. Check the specific facility's visiting page, and confirm their custody level, before you make plans.

Hundreds of Idaho inmates are in Arizona, not Idaho

This is the part you cannot skip. As of spring 2026, Idaho is running over capacity and has shipped close to 700 people out of state to private prisons in Arizona run by CoreCivic. The Saguaro Correctional Center in Eloy, Arizona has held the bulk of them, and in March 2026 Idaho began moving more men to the Central Arizona Florence Correctional Complex. IDOC has said these transfers are a short-term overcrowding fix, not a permanent arrangement, but "short-term" can still mean your person spends a real chunk of their sentence a thousand miles away.

When someone is at Saguaro, the rules change. Saguaro is operated by CoreCivic, not IDOC, so visiting, money, and communication go through CoreCivic's procedures, not IDOC's. The mailing address is the CoreCivic facility in Eloy, and you address mail using the person's IDOC number even though they're physically in Arizona. For most families, driving to Eloy is not realistic, which is exactly why video and phone become the lifeline across that distance. Confirm the current visiting and video setup directly with the facility, because a private contractor can run a different vendor and a different schedule than what you're used to from IDOC.

If you don't know whether your person is in Idaho or Arizona, use the IDOC resident search to confirm their housing location before you plan anything.

County and city jails

This is where most day-to-day video visiting in Idaho actually happens. County jails hold people who are pre-trial or serving shorter sentences, and unlike IDOC, a lot of them lean hard on video.

Ada County Jail in Boise is the biggest and runs its public visitation almost entirely through video, using GettingOut (the Telmate/ViaPath system). Inmates there get a couple of free short video visits a week, with additional visits available for a small fee. Other counties pick their own vendors. Kootenai County (Coeur d'Alene) has used CTEL. Canyon County runs video visits in daily blocks and provides a weekly allotment of free video minutes that don't roll over. Bannock County (Pocatello), Bonneville, Twin Falls, and the rest each set their own provider, schedule, and rules.

Common vendors you'll run into across Idaho jails include GettingOut/ViaPath (Telmate), Securus, ICSolutions, and CTEL, with smaller jails sometimes using HomeWAV, JailATM, NCIC, or Smart Communications. The vendor is jail-specific, so the company that works for Ada County will not be the company that works for the jail one county over.

One warning that saves people money and grief: accounts do not transfer between vendors. If your person moves from a GettingOut jail to a Securus jail, your funds and your account don't follow them. You set up fresh with the new vendor.

How county jail video visitation usually works

There are two flavors, and the difference is the whole ballgame for your wallet.

Onsite (or "onsite video") means you drive to the jail and sit at a video terminal in the lobby to talk to the person, who's on a screen inside. You're physically there, but you're talking through a monitor instead of across a table. Onsite video is very often free, and many jails require you to use it instead of contact visits.

Remote video means you connect from your own phone, tablet, or computer at home. That convenience is what you pay for. Remote sessions are charged per session or per minute, and a free weekly allotment (like Ada County's) typically applies only to certain visits, with anything beyond it costing money.

Idaho jail video rates shift around, partly because the FCC has been capping these rates through 2024 to 2026 and partly because every facility prices differently. I'm not going to print a per-minute number here, because by the time you read it, it'll be wrong. Look up the rate on your specific jail's vendor page before you pay. What's stable is the structure: onsite tends to be free, remote tends to cost, and you'll usually get a small number of free visits before charges kick in.

Setting up a video visit

The steps are roughly the same whichever vendor you're dealing with:

1. Find the vendor for that exact facility. Check the jail or facility website, or the IDOC facility page, to see which company handles visits there. Don't guess.

2. Create an account and verify your identity with a photo ID. Vendors require you to confirm who you are, sometimes by uploading or holding up a government ID. Expect the system to take several hours (GettingOut, for example, asks for up to 12) to fully activate before you can schedule.

3. Add your inmate using their booking or ID number, and get yourself on the approved visitor list. For IDOC that means the approved-visitor background check; for jails it's usually adding them in the vendor app, though some jails still require approval.

4. Schedule your visit, choosing onsite or remote, and pay if it's a remote/paid session. Visits run on set time blocks that depend on the person's housing unit.

5. Test your device and log in early. Get on about 15 minutes ahead. Check your camera, microphone, speakers, and internet. A failed connection on your end usually still burns the visit slot.

Federal and immigration custody

If your person is in federal Bureau of Prisons custody, that's a separate system again. The BOP runs primarily in-person visiting with only limited video, and Idaho has no major BOP institution of its own, so federal inmates with Idaho ties are often held out of state at places like FCI Sheridan in Oregon. Use the BOP inmate locator to find them and then check that specific institution's visiting rules.

Immigration custody is its own animal. ICE doesn't run a dedicated detention center in Idaho; instead it has used county jails, including Elmore County and Jefferson County, as immigration holding facilities under federal certification, and ICE detentions in Idaho have climbed sharply. Each facility holding ICE detainees sets its own visiting and video rules, so you have to confirm with the specific jail. To locate someone in ICE custody, use the ICE Online Detainee Locator, which needs the person's A-Number (the nine-digit alien registration number) or their name plus country of birth.

A note on staying connected

Video is good for one thing money can't really replace: seeing a face, watching a kid wave, reading an expression. That matters, especially when your person is in Arizona and a visit in the flesh isn't happening.

But be honest with yourself about what carries the weight day to day. Mail is the steadiest line there is. It doesn't drop the call, doesn't need a scheduled slot, and the person can hold it and read it again at 2 a.m. when the walls close in. Phone calls are the backbone of staying in touch, the thing you'll actually do most weeks. Video is the bonus on top, the face-to-face when you can get it. Build your routine around mail and calls, and treat video as the thing that makes the distance feel a little smaller.

Related pages:

/prisons/idaho

FCC 2026 call and video rate caps guide

Arrest Record Search (affiliate)