Commissary and Care Packages in Maine

If you have someone locked up in Maine, two questions come up fast: what can they buy, and what can you send. The answer depends on where they are held. A state prison run by the Maine Department of Corrections works one way, a county jail works another, and the federal system plays by its own rulebook. Here is how all three actually work, so you are not guessing or wasting money.

One thing worth saying up front. The most dependable way to stay in touch with anyone inside is the mail. A letter and a few printed photos get through when an account is short or when a facility takes no packages. Treat that as your baseline and the rest as extra.

Maine state prisons (MDOC)

In an MDOC facility there is no cash. Money goes onto the resident's account, and they spend it at the commissary. Maine uses "resident" rather than "inmate" in its own materials, and you will see that wording on the state's pages.

Maine runs its own official online deposit portal rather than handing the whole job to a private money-transfer company. You can deposit with a Visa or MasterCard through the state's system, and you will need the resident's MDOC number and date of birth. The caps are specific: up to $100 a day to the general trust account and $100 a day to the phone account, with a $200 weekly maximum per account, and a single email address cannot exceed those daily limits. Funds usually post about three business days later. The two accounts are separate, but a resident can move money between them.

You can also mail funds, but never cash. The state accepts U.S. Postal money orders, cashier's or official checks from a Maine bank, money orders from a Maine bank, and government or tribal checks. Whatever you send has to carry the resident's full name and MDOC number, and your envelope needs your full name and return address, or it will not be processed. The commissary itself carries food, snacks, hygiene items, stationery and postage, electronics, games, and basic clothing.

Packages for MDOC residents

Maine state prisons run a catalog package program through an MDOC-approved vendor, currently Access Securepak. It works on quarterly ordering windows with a limit of around $50 of products per resident per week, and the orders are consolidated and shipped in with the regular commissary deliveries. You order from the approved catalog and it ships to the facility for inspection. Homemade or family-mailed boxes are not accepted.

That leads to the one warning that applies to every package. Order only through the current approved vendor and within the posted limits and the quarter's window, because programs and item lists change, and a package that does not match the current rules gets refused.

Maine county jails

County jails are their own world. Maine has sixteen counties, each running its own sheriff-operated jail with its own deposit and commissary contracts, so what is true in one county is wrong in the next.

A couple of real examples. Cumberland County, the Portland-area jail and the largest in the state, takes deposits online or by phone through Access Corrections, or by a money order mailed to the jail made payable to the inmate. Androscoggin County in Auburn runs an Access Securepak program for food and hygiene packages with a posted weekly limit of around $25. Other counties use vendors like JailATM or TouchPay, and some city lockups have no package program and allow commissary only.

The takeaway is simple: never assume a county jail uses the same vendor or rules as the state. Pull up that specific jail's page and confirm the deposit vendor, the spending cap, the cutoff, and the package policy before you send anything.

Federal custody and Maine

Here is the part that surprises people: Maine has no federal Bureau of Prisons facility within the state. Someone from Maine with a federal sentence is held at a Bureau of Prisons facility somewhere else, most often elsewhere in the Northeast region. Two that commonly come up are FCI Berlin in New Hampshire, a medium-security prison with a camp about 95 miles from Portland, and FMC Devens in Massachusetts, a federal medical center. Your first move is always the same: use the Bureau of Prisons inmate locator to find exactly where your person is, because the facility decides the mailing address and the rules. Wherever they land, the federal system runs the same way nationwide.

Funding works through the federal Trust Fund. You can send money online or by app through JPay, mail a money order or cashier's check made payable to the Federal Bureau of Prisons with the inmate's full name and register number on it to the national lockbox, or use Western Union. No cash, no personal checks.

The commissary is the only store in the federal system, and the inmate shops it in person on an assigned day each week, usually tied to their register number. You fund the account; they pick from what is in stock. The shelves cover food and drink mixes, hygiene, a limited clothing selection, stationery and stamps, some over-the-counter medicine, and at some facilities approved electronics.

On the money, general population inmates can spend up to $360 per month, and that limit resets monthly. Stamps, phone credits, and over-the-counter medicine generally fall outside the cap. In November and December the limit typically rises to $410 for holiday shopping. An inmate who refuses the Inmate Financial Responsibility Program gets knocked down to roughly $25 per month.

Federal care packages are not allowed. The Bureau prohibits outside food, clothing, or hygiene packages from family or friends. The narrow exceptions are publications shipped directly from a publisher or approved retailer, religious items cleared through the chaplain, and legal materials from an attorney or court.

For messaging, the federal system uses an email tool families reach through the CorrLinks portal, reviewed by staff and not confidential. To find someone in federal custody, use the Bureau of Prisons inmate locator, which searches by name or register number.

Staying connected

Across all three systems the pattern is the same. Funding an account is how someone buys what they need day to day, packages are tied to approved vendors and limits, and the rules shift by facility and by contract. In Maine, remember that a federal sentence means an out-of-state facility, so confirm the location first. The one thing that does not change is the mail. A letter and photos reach almost anyone inside, which makes it the most reliable way to show up for your person while you sort out the rest.