Commissary and Care Packages in New Hampshire

If you have someone locked up in New Hampshire, 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 New Hampshire Department of Corrections works one way, a county facility 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.

New Hampshire state prisons (NHDOC)

In an NHDOC facility there is no cash. Money goes onto the resident's trust account, and they spend it at the commissary on hygiene items, food, snacks, writing materials, and phone credits.

New Hampshire uses JPay for deposits. You can send money online or by app with a debit or credit card, by phone, or by mailing a money order to the facility's business office made payable to your person's full name with their NHDOC number on it. Electronic deposits generally post within a day or two, while mailed money orders take longer to process, so use the online option if timing matters. Most of the state's facilities are clustered in Concord, including the men's prison and the women's facility, with the state's northern prison up in Berlin, so make sure you have the right facility and mailing address before you send anything.

Care packages for NHDOC residents

New Hampshire state prisons do not run an open, year-round care-package program. What they run is a limited seasonal or incentive package program with fixed ordering windows, handled through an authorized vendor such as Access Securepak or Union Supply. You order from the approved catalog during the posted window and the vendor ships to the facility for inspection. Outside those windows, the way you provide items is to fund the commissary account.

That leads to the one warning worth repeating. Order only through the current approved vendor during the posted window, and do not ship a box on someone's say-so, because outside food boxes are generally refused and the commissary is the real channel the rest of the year.

New Hampshire county facilities

New Hampshire's counties each run their own corrections department, and each runs its own deposit and commissary contracts, so what is true in one county is wrong in the next.

A few real examples. Strafford County runs trust deposits through ConnectNetwork. Cheshire County uses Access Corrections, taking a money order or cashier's check by mail addressed to inmate deposit, with no cash or personal checks. Hillsborough County in Manchester is the largest county facility in the state. City lockups often have no package program and allow commissary only.

The takeaway is simple: never assume a county facility 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 New Hampshire

New Hampshire has one federal Bureau of Prisons institution: FCI Berlin, a medium-security prison for men with an adjacent minimum-security satellite camp, up in Coos County in the far north of the state, about 115 miles north of Concord. It opened in 2012 and is one of the newer prisons in the federal system. Note that it is a federal prison, separate from the state's own northern prison that also sits in Berlin, so confirm which system holds your person. If your person has a federal sentence, check the inmate locator, since they could be at FCI Berlin or anywhere else in the country.

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 restricted, and the rules shift by facility and by contract. In New Hampshire, remember that the state and federal prisons in Berlin are two different systems, and that state packages are essentially a seasonal-window thing. The one constant through all of it 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.