Staying In Contact

By Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., and Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA

There are five ways to stay in touch with someone in federal prison — postal mail, telephone, electronic messaging through TRULINCS, visits, and, at some institutions, video visits — and every one of them runs on rules the Bureau of Prisons publishes. Mail is the only channel that works the day a person arrives; the other four require a list, an approval, or money in an account first.

This page walks each channel end to end: what the rule actually says, what it costs, who is listening, what gets a letter or an email rejected, and what to do when a channel stops working. Where the honest answer is it depends on the institution, we say so and name the document that decides it.

The five channels at a glance

Channel	Governing authority	Who pays	Monitored?	The limit that surprises people
Postal mail	28 C.F.R. part 540, subpart B; PS 5265.14	Sender pays own postage; incarcerated person buys stamps	Incoming general mail is opened and inspected in every case; outgoing may be sealed only at minimum and low security	Cash, checks and money orders enclosed in a letter are rejected, not deposited
Telephone	28 C.F.R. part 540, subpart I; PS 5264.09	The incarcerated person, from a trust fund account	Yes, except a properly placed attorney call	Up to 510 minutes per calendar month; 15-minute calls; 30 numbers
Electronic messaging (TRULINCS / CorrLinks)	PS 4500.13, ch. 14	Per-minute fee charged to the incarcerated person; the outside contact is billed separately by the portal	Yes — and email to a lawyer is expressly not privileged	30 messaging contacts; 13,000 characters; no attachments
Visits	28 C.F.R. part 540, subpart D; PS 5267.09	Visitor’s own travel	Visiting room is supervised and may be monitored	Minimum guaranteed is four hours per month, not per week
Video visits	No national rule — institution supplement	Varies	Yes	Availability is decided facility by facility

Figures verified against the program statements and regulations linked in each row. Program Statements are Bureau policy, not law; the regulation in 28 C.F.R. is the binding authority, and the statement is the Bureau’s instruction for applying it.

Before any of it works: find the person, then get on the lists

Nothing else on this page happens until you know where your person is and what their register number is. The Bureau’s public inmate locator returns a name, a register number, and a facility; our page on the federal inmate locator walks the search, and how the DOC inmate number search works explains what the number means. Write the register number down and never send anything without it. The Trust Fund manual requires the committed name — the name on the judgment, not a nickname — and the eight-digit register number on money instruments and on the outside of the envelope, and says instruments without them are returned to the sender or, if there is no return address, deposited into a Treasury account (PS 4500.13 at p. 76).

Then understand who builds the lists. You cannot add yourself. Every list — telephone, email, visiting, funds — starts with the incarcerated person entering you on their contact list at a TRULINCS workstation, or submitting a paper form to unit staff. During admission and orientation, an inmate who chooses to have telephone privileges prepares a proposed telephone list and acknowledges that the people on it are willing to receive calls (28 C.F.R. § 540.101(a)(1)). Where TRULINCS is available, people generate and maintain those lists themselves; where it is not, they submit a BP-A1054, TRULINCS Contact Request Form, to Unit Management staff, and a submitted list is ordinarily processed within seven calendar days (PS 5264.09 at p. 4). Telephone number requests entered in TRULINCS reach the phone system in roughly fifteen minutes (PS 4500.13 at p. 126).

So the first thing to do is wait for the first call or letter, and then answer it with the exact information the lists need: your full legal name as it appears on your ID, your address, your phone number, and your email address.

Postal mail: the channel that never stops

Mail is the one channel that works from day one, costs the least, and cannot be cut off by an empty commissary account. It is also the most heavily regulated. Two categories matter, and confusing them is the most common mistake families make.

General correspondence is ordinary mail from family and friends. Staff open and inspect all of it — that is not discretionary — and may read it “as frequently as deemed necessary to maintain security or monitor a particular problem” (28 C.F.R. § 540.14(a)). Outgoing mail runs on the institution’s security level: a sentenced person at a minimum or low security institution may seal their own outgoing mail, which is sent unopened unless one of four exceptions applies; at medium, high, or administrative institutions, outgoing general mail may not be sealed and may be read (28 C.F.R. § 540.14(c)). If you want to know which rule applies to your person’s letters, start with our security levels explainer.

Special mail is the narrow protected category — courts, attorneys, Members of Congress, the President and Vice President, embassies and consulates, state attorneys general, prosecutors, governors, federal and state law enforcement, and representatives of the news media. Incoming special mail is opened only in the person’s presence, inspected for physical contraband, and not read or copied — but only if the sender is adequately identified on the envelope and the front is marked “Special Mail — Open only in the presence of the inmate” (28 C.F.R. § 540.18). Miss the marking and staff may treat it as general correspondence and read it. Legal mail carries an extra procedural layer — the envelope is logged with date and time of receipt, date and time of delivery, and the name of the delivering staff member (28 C.F.R. § 540.19). Family letters are never special mail, no matter what you write on the envelope.

Practical mechanics, all from the Bureau’s own manuals. Incoming letters are delivered daily Monday through Friday and “ordinarily will be made within 24 hours of receipt, excluding weekends and holidays”; special and legal mail is given priority and staff must document a re-attempt every 24 hours until it is delivered (PS 5800.16 at pp. 20–21). Anything weighing 16 ounces or more that is not paper, or is excessive paper, is a package and needs prior approval (PS 5800.16 at p. 7). Stamps and stamped items mailed in from outside are returned to the sender — stamps may only be issued by the institution or bought at commissary (28 C.F.R. § 540.21(j)). Money in an envelope is rejected outright; deposits go to the centralized lockbox (28 C.F.R. § 540.23). Our page on how to write to someone in federal prison covers addressing and content, and photobooks and photos covers the picture rules; books and magazines run on a separate policy, incoming publications.

Applied Insight — Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA, Managing Director: When a letter goes missing, the useful question is never “did they lose it.” It is “which log should show it.” Incoming general correspondence is not individually logged; special and legal mail is, with times and a staff name. That is why we tell families to send anything that matters — a medical record, a document a lawyer needs, proof of a home address for release planning — in a way that creates a record, and why we ask counsel to mark envelopes exactly as the regulation requires rather than approximately.

Is incoming mail scanned or photocopied?

Not under national policy. Neither the Correspondence program statement nor the Mail Management Manual authorizes photocopying, digitizing, or off-site processing of incoming general correspondence. The only scanning either document describes is electronic contraband screening — x-ray, metal detector, and ion spectrometry — applied to outgoing special mail, and PS 5800.16 says in terms that this screening “is for the sole purpose of identifying harmful materials, and cannot be used to read or review the content” (PS 5800.16 at p. 22).

What does vary is local mail handling, and the instrument that governs the variation is the institution supplement. The Correspondence program statement opens by requiring that “the Warden shall establish correspondence procedures for inmates in each institution,” and that institution guidelines “be made widely available to staff and inmates” through bulletin boards, the library, or other means (PS 5265.14 at p. 1). So if you are told that letters at a particular facility are being copied, held longer, or restricted to postcards, that instruction is local, and the document to ask for is the institution supplement on correspondence — not a national rule. Ask for it by name through the unit team, or have the incarcerated person request it with an Inmate Request to Staff. Since PS 5511.08 took effect on 19 March 2026, that request goes through the electronic Request to Staff Service in TRULINCS, one per department per day, with a response ordinarily completed within 30 calendar days if warranted; the paper BP-A0148 Inmate Request to Staff is now the exception, for people the Warden exempts and for anyone housed in a Protective Custody Unit (PS 5511.08 at p. 2). If a local practice is being applied in a way that violates the national policy, that is an administrative remedy issue; see prison grievances.

Telephone: up to 510 minutes, 15 minutes at a time

The numbers first, because they are the reason families run out of contact by the third week of the month.

Rule	Figure	Source
Monthly telephone allowance	510 minutes per calendar month; 300 of them at no charge for people eligible for First Step Act telephone incentives	PS 5264.09 at p. 7
After 300 minutes	Anyone who exhausts 300 minutes “may purchase an additional 210 minutes”; the extra 100 minutes in November and December under the 2008 policy is not in the 2026 edition	PS 5264.09 at p. 7
Maximum length of a single call	Should generally not exceed 15 minutes; warning tone about a minute before cutoff; at least 30 minutes between completed calls	PS 5264.09 at pp. 6–7
Numbers on the approved list	30, ordinarily; Associate Warden may authorize more	28 C.F.R. § 540.101(a)
Changes to the list	Once per calendar month unless staff find a demonstrated need; the regulation’s floor is quarterly	PS 5264.09 at p. 5; 28 C.F.R. § 540.101(b)
Minimum for a person with no money	At least one collect call each month; “without funds” means no trust fund balance of $6.00 for the past 30 days	PS 5264.09 at p. 10
Hours the phones are on	6:00 AM to no later than 11:30 PM; access within those hours is set locally by the Warden	PS 5264.09 at p. 7

The 510-minute limit “may be used for any combination of collect or direct-dial calls at the inmate’s discretion”; people eligible for First Step Act telephone incentives get 300 minutes a month at no charge, anyone who exhausts 300 minutes may buy 210 more, and the Warden may give indigent people additional minutes for good cause (PS 5264.09 at p. 7). The limit does not apply to properly placed, unmonitored legal calls (PS 5264.09 at p. 7).

Assume every other call is recorded. The Warden must establish monitoring procedures for any telephone in the institution and must give notice of it; the single exception in the regulation is that “staff may not monitor an inmate’s properly placed call to an attorney” (28 C.F.R. § 540.102). Notices in English and Spanish are posted at monitored phones stating that using the phone is consent to monitoring. Attorneys may be placed on the ordinary telephone list — with the understanding that those calls are monitored like any other (PS 5264.09 at p. 4). Unmonitored legal calls are a separate, arranged process; see attorney-client communications in the Bureau of Prisons.

Three technical prohibitions end more calls than any rule: no call forwarding, no three-way calling, and no toll-free or credit-card numbers — 800, 888, 877, 866, 900 and 976 numbers are all unusable, and the Bureau does not permit faxes at all (PS 5264.09 at pp. 3, 8). If you forward your landline to your cell phone, calls to that number will fail and can be treated as circumvention. Recipients can also block themselves: a called party can block further calls from their own handset through a voice prompt, and once blocked, the number is restored only on a written request that includes a copy of a recent phone bill and a copy of a valid government identification (PS 5264.09 at p. 6). Our inmate phone calls page goes deeper on how a call actually gets placed.

On cost. Direct-dial rates are set by the Bureau, not negotiated locally: the Chief of the Trust Fund Branch, with the Assistant Director for Administration’s concurrence, sets a “standard per minute flat rate for each type of service,” and rates “are standard throughout the Bureau regardless of location” (PS 4500.13 at p. 55). Collect and prepaid-collect rates are charged under the telephone contract, and the billed party gets those from the service provider — that is a private contractor’s pricing, not a Bureau figure, so ask the provider rather than trusting a number you read anywhere else. The current rate sheet must be kept on file at the institution, in places such as the law library and the units. Money moves from the commissary account to the phone account, twice a day, by interactive voice response (PS 4500.13 at p. 55).

Email: TRULINCS and the CorrLinks portal

TRULINCS is the Bureau’s limited inmate computer system. There is no internet access; there is a closed messaging service that reaches an outside portal, and everything on it is monitored. “Inmates have no expectation of privacy as to any communication on or information stored within the system” (PS 4500.13 at p. 118). Participation is consent — for the incarcerated person, each time they log in; for you, the moment you accept the system-generated invitation.

How it starts: the incarcerated person adds your email address as a contact. You receive an automated message telling you that a federal inmate wants to add you, and that you may approve, refuse, ignore, or refuse all future requests from any federal inmate. Approving is consent to have staff monitor the content of every message (PS 4500.13 at p. 127).

The operating limits, all from the Trust Fund manual as reissued 7 May 2026:

• 30 active messaging contacts, ordinarily, and 100 active contacts overall on the contact list (which also carries phone numbers and postal addresses) — pp. 125–126
• 13,000 characters per message and no attachments — so no photos, no PDFs, no documents — p. 130
• 60 consecutive minutes maximum in a session, with a 15-minute interval before the next one; the Warden may adjust both — pp. 129–130
• Every message in and out is held a minimum of one hour before it moves — p. 130
• Messages in every folder are kept 180 days, then automatically purged — save anything you need — p. 130
• A per-minute fee is charged while the person is inside the messaging service, and printing costs extra; those program fees are set by the Chief of the Trust Fund Branch with the Assistant Director’s concurrence, and are withdrawn from the person’s deposit fund account — pp. 119, 130

Two hard warnings. First, email to a lawyer is not privileged. The manual is explicit: attorneys and other special-mail recipients may be placed on the public email contact list “with the acknowledgment that public emails exchanged with such individuals will not be treated as privileged communications and will be subject to monitoring” (PS 4500.13 at pp. 126–127). Second, messaging is the first thing to be taken away. It is the only TRULINCS service the Bureau treats as presumptively restrictable, and it is unavailable in segregation and in protective custody units — though incoming messages continue to arrive and can be read when access returns (PS 4500.13 at pp. 122–124). A restriction imposed pending an investigation is limited to 30 days and must be re-authorized in writing by the Warden every 30 days. Our CorrLinks and TRULINCS inmate email page covers registering on the outside portal.

Visits: the approval comes before the drive

The regulation guarantees very little and delegates a great deal. What it guarantees: the Warden “shall allow each inmate a minimum of four hours visiting time per month,” and may limit length or frequency only to avoid chronic overcrowding (28 C.F.R. § 540.43). Every institution must offer visiting at least on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays; evening hours are permitted where staffing allows, and there is no entitlement to visit on both weekend days (28 C.F.R. § 540.42).

Getting on the list is a paper process with a real sequence:

1. The incarcerated person submits a proposed visitor list during admission and orientation. Immediate family — mother, father, step-parents, foster parents, brothers and sisters, spouse, children — go on the list “absent strong circumstances that preclude visiting” (PS 5267.09 at p. 8).
2. The incarcerated person mails you the form. Staff do not. You complete BP-A0629, Visitor Information and mail it directly back to the named unit staff member — not to your person (PS 5267.09 at p. 17). The form asks for legal name, date of birth, address, citizenship and identifying number, relationship, whether you knew the person before incarceration, any convictions, any current supervision, and whether you correspond with other incarcerated people. It carries an authorization releasing your criminal history to the Warden, and it warns that a false statement is punishable under 18 U.S.C. § 1001.
3. Staff run a background check. Volunteers, contractors and some other entrants complete a separate BP-A0660 Criminal History Check authorization instead. Checks are regenerated every two years and reviewed for new activity (PS 5267.09 at p. 17).
4. Staff notify the incarcerated person of the approval or denial. The incarcerated person notifies you — nobody from the Bureau will call you (PS 5267.09 at p. 18).

Two limits people trip over. Friends and associates ordinarily must have known the person before incarceration, and the list should ordinarily hold no more than 10 friends and associates; the Warden may make exceptions, particularly for someone with no other visitors (PS 5267.09 at pp. 8–9). A prior conviction does not automatically disqualify a visitor — staff weigh “the nature, extent, and recentness of convictions” — but someone on probation, parole or supervised release ordinarily needs written authorization from their supervising officer first (PS 5267.09 at p. 9).

At the door you will sign BP-A0224, Notification to Visitor, which states that entering Bureau grounds is implied consent to a search of you and your belongings under 28 C.F.R. part 511, lists prohibited objects, and asks you to declare medications. Bring valid state or government-issued photo identification; children under 16 accompanied by a parent or guardian are exempt from that requirement, and children under 16 may not visit unaccompanied (PS 5267.09 at pp. 10, 18). Do not try to hand money to staff for the account — the policy forbids it. Everything else — dress code, container rules, vending, how many visits per month the institution can actually accommodate — is in that facility’s institution supplement, and our inmate visitation page walks a first visit start to finish.

Video visits: real at some institutions, absent at others

There is no national federal video-visiting entitlement. The word “video” does not appear anywhere in the Bureau’s Visiting Regulations program statement or in the visiting regulations at 28 C.F.R. part 540, subpart D. Where video visiting exists, it exists because that institution stood it up, and the document that governs it is the institution supplement — the Trust Fund manual requires each institution’s local TRULINCS supplement to address, “where applicable, video service procedures” (PS 4500.13 at p. 14).

Policy does name videoconferencing in two restricted settings, and in both it is a substitute for a contact visit rather than an addition: in Special Management Units and in Secure Mental Health Units, people “may be provided non-contact visits, through the use of videoconferencing or other technology” (PS 5217.02 at p. 7; PS 5335.02 at p. 19). Separately, the Bureau’s July 2026 tablet services contract announcement says the new platform will include “secure messaging and video services.” How that lands facility by facility, and how to find out what your institution offers, is on our video visiting page.

Attorney communication is a different system

Legal contact does not run on the rules above, and treating it as if it does costs people privilege. In outline: attorney mail is special mail, opened only in the person’s presence and not read, but only when the envelope carries the attorney’s name, an indication that the sender is an attorney, and the “Special Mail — Open only in the presence of the inmate” marking (28 C.F.R. § 540.18). Attorney calls are monitored like any other call unless they are arranged in advance as unmonitored legal calls; the regulation forbids staff from monitoring “an inmate’s properly placed call to an attorney” and requires the Warden to tell people how to arrange one (28 C.F.R. § 540.102). Attorney email on TRULINCS is never privileged. Attorney visits are handled as professional visits with their own forms. The full treatment, including how counsel sets up an unmonitored call and what to do when legal mail is opened outside the person’s presence, is on attorney-client communications in the federal Bureau of Prisons.

What changed recently in prison communication rules

Currency matters here because most of what is published about federal prison contact is years out of date.

• 7 May 2026 — the Trust Fund/Deposit Fund Manual was reissued. PS 4500.13 rescinded PS 4500.12 CN-1 (6 March 2025). It is now the operative source for every TRULINCS, commissary and telephone-account figure on this page. Among other changes it renamed the commissary “MP3 Player” the secured media device and revised the definition of the Bureau’s public messaging access portal.
• 8 July 2026 — a nationwide inmate tablet services contract was awarded. The Bureau announced that “secure, corrections-grade tablets will be made available to all individuals in BOP custody,” with “secure messaging and video services,” and that paper processes such as commissary ordering and request forms will move to digital systems. Rollout is explicitly phased (BOP press release, 8 July 2026). See tablets in federal prison.
• August 2026 — core inmate systems moved to a cloud platform. The Bureau states it migrated the systems supporting custody classification, medical information, release calculations and program eligibility over a single weekend (BOP News, 27 Aug. 2026). It changes no rule, but it is a dated agency statement worth knowing if a record problem appeared around that time.
• 3 September 2026 — the telephone policy was reissued. PS 5264.09 rescinded PS 5264.08 (2008): the monthly limit is now 510 minutes, 300 of them at no charge for people eligible for First Step Act telephone incentives and 210 more available to buy after 300; the extra November and December minutes are gone; and the policy now says “electronic inmate communications system” where it used to say TRULINCS (PS 5264.09 at pp. 1, 7). The correspondence rules have not changed: PS 5265.14 (2011) remains the current edition.

Where people get stuck staying in contact

“The call never comes.” Check the obvious causes in order: is your number on the list yet (it takes about fifteen minutes once entered in TRULINCS, or up to seven calendar days on paper); is your line forwarded; is it a mobile number that your carrier routes through a service the system reads as a third party; did someone in your household block the number from the handset; and has the account run out of money or minutes. If the phone list itself was denied, the Associate Warden must document the disapproval in writing to both the incarcerated person and the proposed recipient, and the denial is appealable (28 C.F.R. § 540.101(a)(3)).

“A letter was returned and I do not know why.” Rejections are not silent. The Warden must notify the sender in writing of the rejection and the reasons, must notify the incarcerated person, and must advise both of the right to appeal; the appeal goes to an official other than the one who disapproved it (28 C.F.R. § 540.13). If you did not get a notice, ask for one. The Bureau uses form BP-A0327 for returned correspondence and BP-A0328 for stamps and negotiable instruments sent back to the sender.

“Visiting was suspended.” Distinguish three things. A disciplinary loss of visiting comes out of the discipline process, and for someone in detention or segregation only a Discipline Hearing Officer — not the Unit Disciplinary Committee — can impose it (PS 5267.09 at p. 14). A temporary suspension by the Warden on reasonable suspicion should ordinarily last only as long as the investigation and discipline process takes. An institution-wide interruption is a modified-operations issue; see lockdowns and modified operations.

“Nothing works and nobody answers.” The route is the same for all four channels: an informal request to staff — through the TRULINCS Request to Staff Service, or on the paper BP-A0148 if the Warden has exempted the person or they are in a Protective Custody Unit — then the formal administrative remedy. The default deadline is short — a BP-9 is due 20 calendar days after the event (28 C.F.R. § 542.14) — so do not spend a month waiting for a phone call to be returned. One wrinkle is worth knowing: the Administrative Remedy program statement carries a 120-day filing window specifically for “a disputed telephone charge, credit, or telephone service problem for which the inmate requests reimbursement to his/her telephone account,” expressly tied to a settlement agreement remaining in effect, while every other telephone complaint — privileges, lists, access — runs on the ordinary 20 days (PS 1330.18 at pp. 4–5). The regulation itself contains no telephone carve-out, and the telephone program statement says the extended window was deleted. Treat 20 days as the deadline and raise the longer window only as an alternative argument. Our prison grievances page and how to file a BP-9 walk the process.

Frequently Asked Questions About Staying in Contact

Reviewed for legal accuracy by Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney·September 2026