Commissary and Care Packages in New York

If you have someone locked up in New York, 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 Department of Corrections and Community Supervision works one way, a New York City or county jail works another, and the federal system plays by its own rulebook. Here is how all of them 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 York state prisons (DOCCS)

In a DOCCS facility there is no cash. Money goes onto the incarcerated person's account, and they spend it at the commissary on hygiene items, snacks, and stationery.

New York uses JPay for deposits, and you can send money by mail, phone, online, through the app, or by MoneyGram. A nice feature here: New York does not charge a fee to deposit funds through JPay. Cash deposits are capped at $50 and handled by facility staff, and money generally posts within about a day. One thing to watch: New York actively collects court-ordered obligations and account advances out of incoming money, so if your person owes restitution, surcharges, or a balance to the facility, a share of what you send can be taken for that before they ever see it. Phone calls run through Securus, and email and photos run through JPay on a tablet.

Care packages for DOCCS residents

This is where New York is stricter than most states. Under the state's package directive, packages can only come directly from an approved vendor, shipped by USPS, FedEx, or UPS. You can no longer pack your own box and mail it, and you can no longer bring a package to a visit. Everything has to come from a vendor on the approved list, and the state also publishes a disapproved-vendor list, so check both before you order. The policy has drawn real criticism from families and lawmakers, but as it stands, vendor-direct is the only way to send a package.

That leads to the one warning worth repeating. Order only through an approved vendor, because a box from a private sender or a disapproved vendor will be turned away at the package room, and you will be out the money.

New York City and county jails

New York City runs its own jail system through the city Department of Correction, separate from the state, with Rikers Island as its main complex, and the city is under a plan to replace Rikers with smaller borough-based jails. Outside the city, every county runs its own jail with its own deposit and commissary contracts, so what is true in one place is wrong in the next.

A real example of how local the rules get: one county jail caps commissary at one order per week, no more than $125 total, with food limited to $95 and hygiene to $30 within that, and lets you load a kiosk up to $200 at a time. Another county will set entirely different numbers. City lockups often have no package program and allow commissary only.

The takeaway is simple: never assume a city or 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 New York

New York has several federal Bureau of Prisons facilities. FCI Otisville, in Orange County about 70 miles northwest of New York City, is a medium-security prison with an adjacent minimum-security camp. FCI Ray Brook, up in the Adirondacks near Lake Placid, is a medium-security prison built originally as the athletes' village for the 1980 Winter Olympics. MDC Brooklyn is an administrative detention center that mostly holds people awaiting trial or sentencing. The old Manhattan detention center, MCC New York, has been closed since 2021, with those held there moved elsewhere. If your person has a federal sentence, confirm the facility on the inmate locator, since they could be at any of these 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 of these 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 York, the two things to remember are that state deposits through JPay carry no fee, and that state packages can only come from an approved vendor, never from your own kitchen. 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.