There is no nationwide federal video-visiting program that every Bureau of Prisons institution must offer. 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 — so whether your person’s facility offers a video visit, on what schedule, at what price, and through which vendor is decided at that institution, in a document called the institution supplement.
That is the answer most families are looking for and almost never get straight. This page shows you exactly where video visiting does and does not appear in Bureau policy, what the July 2026 tablet contract announcement actually promised, how to find out in one phone call what your facility offers, and what a video visit is legally — which is not the same thing as an in-person visit and is emphatically not a confidential legal visit.
Video visiting in federal prison: the facts
| Question | Answer | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Is there a national BOP video-visiting entitlement? | No. Neither 28 C.F.R. part 540, subpart D nor PS 5267.09 mentions video visiting at all | 28 C.F.R. §§ 540.40–540.52; PS 5267.09 |
| What is guaranteed instead? | A minimum of four hours of in-person visiting time per month, and a schedule that at minimum covers Saturdays, Sundays and holidays | 28 C.F.R. § 540.43; § 540.42 |
| Where does policy actually name video? | As a permitted substitute for a contact visit in Special Management Units and Secure Mental Health Units | PS 5217.02 at p. 7; PS 5335.02 at p. 19 |
| What document governs whether a facility has it? | 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 |
| Is a video visit monitored? | Yes. It is a visit and it is on a Bureau system; nothing in policy makes it confidential | 28 C.F.R. § 540.51(h) |
| Is it changing? | The Bureau announced on 8 July 2026 that a new nationwide tablet platform will include “secure messaging and video services,” rolled out in phases | BOP press release, 8 July 2026 |
Program Statements are Bureau policy, not law. The binding authority is the regulation in 28 C.F.R.; the program statement is the Bureau’s instruction for applying it, and an institution supplement is that institution’s instruction for applying the program statement.
On this page
What the national visiting rules actually say — and don’t
The Bureau’s visiting policy is built around people physically coming to the institution. The regulation opens by encouraging “visiting by family, friends, and community groups to maintain the morale of the inmate and to develop closer relationships between the inmate and family members or others in the community,” and then delegates the details: “The Warden shall develop procedures consistent with this rule to permit inmate visiting” (28 C.F.R. § 540.40).
What the regulation guarantees is small and concrete. Each Warden must establish a visiting schedule, and “at a minimum, the Warden shall establish visiting hours at the institution on Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays”; evening hours are permitted where staffing allows, and the regulation says outright that there is “no requirement that every visitor has the opportunity to visit on both days of the weekend” (28 C.F.R. § 540.42). Each 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).
None of that is satisfied by a video call, and none of it entitles anyone to one. When people say “the Bureau offers video visits,” what is true is narrower: some institutions do, using local money, local space, local staff and a contractor, under a local written procedure. The Program Statement’s Institution Supplement section lists more than twenty things each facility must set locally — the visiting schedule, dress code, identification requirements, what may be carried into the visiting room, rules for children, procedures for non-contact visiting areas, and “procedures addressing frequency of changes to the inmate(s) Visiting List” (PS 5267.09 at pp. 4–5). Video is not on that list either — which is precisely why it varies.
The one place the Bureau’s own money-and-technology policy anticipates it is the Trust Fund manual. Reissued 7 May 2026, PS 4500.13 requires every institution to write a separate local supplement for TRULINCS operations and to address, among other items, “where applicable, video service procedures” (PS 4500.13 at p. 14). Read that phrase carefully: it assumes some institutions will have a video service and some will not, and it makes the local supplement the document that says which.
Where video visiting does appear in Bureau policy
Three places, and in none of them is it a family benefit added on top of ordinary visiting.
Special Management Units. For people housed in an SMU — the restricted program for those the Bureau says present unique security concerns — the conditions-of-confinement section states: “Inmates may receive visitors in accordance with 28 CFR part 540. Inmates may be provided non-contact visits, through the use of videoconferencing or other technology” (PS 5217.02 at p. 7). The role of video there is to make a non-contact visit possible, not to add a channel.
Secure Mental Health Units. The Secure Mental Health Units statement, reissued 19 March 2026, carries the same sentence and makes the trade-off explicit: people on the unit “will have the opportunity to maintain active visitor lists,” institutions “will determine if contact or non-contact visits are appropriate,” and non-contact visits “through the use of videoconferencing or other technology” may be provided. Contact visits, by contrast, “may be recommended by the mental health provider and approved by the Captain” (PS 5335.02 at p. 19).
Patient Care. The Patient Care statement reissued on 22 June 2026 mentions video only in passing, listing the ways a patient can share medical information with family: “There are several routes of communication available including visitation, phone calls, video visits, email, and mail” (PS 6031.06). It confirms the Bureau contemplates video visits existing. It creates no right to one.
There is a fourth place worth knowing about because of what it does not say. The Change Notice of 1 August 2023 to the Visiting Regulations added an “Alternative Legal Access Arrangements” requirement: after a significant or disruptive event at a facility lasting more than 24 hours, “each facility will develop alternative legal access arrangements,” which “may include, but are not limited to, alternative visiting locations at the facility, expansion of normal visiting hours, and any additional procedures consistent with the mission and security of the facility” (PS 5267.09 CN-1 at pp. 1–2). Even in the provision written specifically to keep legal access open during a lockdown, videoconferencing is not named as a required option. That is a fair measure of where video sits in current national policy.
Applied Insight — Christopher Zoukis, JD, MBA, Managing Director: The practical consequence of all this is that “does your facility do video visits” is a question about one document, not about federal law. When we take on a prison matter we ask for the institution supplements early — visiting, TRULINCS, and correspondence — because they answer in writing what phone calls to the front desk answer inconsistently. A family member can ask the unit team for the visiting supplement; the incarcerated person can request it through an Inmate Request to Staff. Getting the local rule on paper is what turns an argument about what somebody was told into an argument about what the institution published.
What the July 2026 tablet contract actually promised
On 8 July 2026 the Bureau announced the award of a nationwide inmate tablet services contract. The announcement is the most current dated agency statement on video contact, so it is worth quoting precisely rather than paraphrasing.
The Bureau said “secure, corrections-grade tablets will be made available to all individuals in BOP custody,” and that the devices “will empower inmates with improved communication channels, including secure messaging and video services, helping them maintain healthy relationships with loved ones.” It also said the platform will move paper processes — commissary ordering, request forms, program registrations — onto digital systems, and that “the rollout of the new tablet services will occur in phases across BOP institutions, each implementation guided by strict security protocols and oversight” (BOP press release, 8 July 2026).
Four things follow, and it is worth being blunt about each:
- A contract award is not a program statement. Nothing in the announcement changed 28 C.F.R. part 540 or PS 5267.09. Until policy is amended, the national visiting rules read exactly as they did before.
- “In phases” means your facility may be last. The announcement gives no schedule, no order and no completion date, and we will not invent one.
- “Video services” is not defined. The announcement does not say whether that means visitor-to-inmate video visits, video programming, video calls, or all three, nor who pays or what the session limits are.
- The Trust Fund manual predates it. PS 4500.13 was issued 7 May 2026, two months before the award, and describes a TRULINCS world of fixed workstations and a commissary-purchased media device — not tablets. What is in policy and what is in the press release do not yet match. See tablets in federal prison for that gap in detail.
Separately, the Bureau announced in August 2026 that it moved its core inmate records systems to a cloud platform over a single weekend (BOP News, 27 Aug. 2026). That is infrastructure, not a visiting rule, but it is the backdrop against which the tablet rollout is happening.
How to find out what your facility offers, in one call
Do not guess, and do not rely on a vendor’s marketing page or a message board. There is a short, reliable sequence.
- Confirm the facility. Use the Bureau’s inmate locator to confirm where your person actually is right now, and write down the register number; our federal inmate locator page walks it. People move, and a supplement is facility-specific.
- Look at the institution’s own page first. The Visiting Regulations require each institution supplement to include the facility address and phone number, directions, local transportation information, and “days and hours of visitation,” and the 2023 Change Notice requires the institution to notify families and the public when the visiting schedule is disrupted — by “telephone, email, or listed on the Institution’s webpage” (PS 5267.09 at pp. 4–5, CN-1 at p. 2). Our federal prison directory collects facility records.
- Call the institution’s main number and ask two questions, in these words: “Does this facility offer video visiting, and is it covered in the institution supplement?” and “If it does, what does a family member have to do to be approved and to schedule?” Ask for the visiting lieutenant or the unit team if the switchboard cannot answer.
- Have your person request the supplement in writing. An Inmate Request to Staff (BP-A0148) addressed to the unit manager, asking for the visiting supplement and the TRULINCS supplement, produces a written answer with a staff signature and a date on it. Since PS 5511.08 took effect on 19 March 2026, that request is submitted 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 — and the paper form is reserved for people the Warden exempts and for anyone housed in a Protective Custody Unit (PS 5511.08 at p. 2). Either way it is a dated record, and that record is worth far more than a phone call if you later need to challenge how a rule is being applied.
- Get on the visiting list regardless. Every facility we have seen that offers video visiting requires the same approval as an in-person visit — which means the BP-A0629 Visitor Information form, a background check, and the incarcerated person notifying you of approval. Start that now, because it is the long pole. Our inmate visitation page walks the whole approval sequence.
What a video visit is — and is not
It is a visit. That means it is governed by visiting rules, not messaging rules. Staff “shall supervise each inmate visit to prevent the passage of contraband and to ensure the security and good order of the institution,” and the Warden “may establish procedures to enable monitoring of the visiting area” with notice to both visitors and inmates (28 C.F.R. § 540.51(h)). Assume a video visit is recorded and that both ends are visible.
It is not confidential, and it is not a legal visit. Attorney visits are a different category with a different rule: staff “may not subject visits between an attorney and an inmate to auditory supervision,” and attorney visits are to take place in a private conference room to the extent practicable, arranged for unobstructed visual supervision only (PS 5267.09 at p. 12). A general-population video visit set up through a family scheduling portal carries none of that protection. Counsel arranging remote contact should treat it as a legal visit and arrange it as one — see attorney-client communications in the federal Bureau of Prisons.
It does not replace the four-hour minimum. The in-person entitlement in § 540.43 is not satisfied by video, and nothing in policy says an institution may substitute one for the other in general population. In the two restricted settings where policy names videoconferencing, it substitutes for the contact element of a visit, not for visiting itself.
It is not the same as a phone call or an email. Telephone minutes come out of the monthly telephone allowance — up to 510 minutes — under PS 5264.09; electronic messaging runs on session and character limits under PS 4500.13. Video, where it exists, is scheduled and priced separately. See inmate phone calls and CorrLinks and TRULINCS inmate email.
It can be taken away. Visiting privileges can be lost through the discipline process, and a video visit is a visit. For someone in detention or segregation, only a Discipline Hearing Officer — not the Unit Disciplinary Committee — may impose a loss of visiting (PS 5267.09 at p. 14). See inmate discipline proceedings.
What it costs, and who is charging you
Be careful here, because this is where families get taken.
Two categories of money exist and they behave differently. Fees the Bureau sets are national: the Chief of the Trust Fund Branch, with the Assistant Director for Administration’s concurrence, “sets all program fees” for TRULINCS services and sets telephone rates as “a standard per minute flat rate for each type of service,” which “are standard throughout the Bureau regardless of location” (PS 4500.13 at pp. 55, 119). Charges a private contractor sets are not national and are not published in policy — collect and prepaid-collect telephone rates, for example, are “charged in accordance with TRUFONE contract requirements,” and the manual tells the billed party to get them “by contacting the service provider.”
Where a facility offers video visiting through an outside vendor, the price you see on that vendor’s site is a private company’s price, not a Bureau figure. We do not publish those numbers, because they change without notice and vary by contract, and a stale price on a law firm’s page is worse than no price. What you should do instead:
- Ask the institution whether video visiting is charged to your account (paid by the outside party through a vendor portal) or to the incarcerated person’s trust fund account. That single question determines who has to have money.
- If it is charged to the trust fund account, understand that the person is also paying for phone minutes, messaging minutes, and commissary out of the same balance, against a $460 monthly commissary spending limit that rises by $50 in the November/December holiday period (PS 4500.13 at p. 28).
- Never send funds to a vendor address for deposit into a trust fund account. Deposits go to the Bureau’s centralized lockbox; funds enclosed in a letter “are to be rejected” (28 C.F.R. § 540.23). See how to send money to a federal inmate.
Where people get stuck with video visiting
“The website said video visits are available.” A vendor’s coverage map is a sales document. The institution supplement is the operative document. If the two disagree, the supplement wins, and the person who can produce it is the unit team.
“We were approved for visiting but cannot schedule a video visit.” Approval to the visiting list and enrollment in a video platform are usually two separate steps at facilities that offer both — list approval is a Bureau process under 28 C.F.R. § 540.51, and account registration is a vendor process. Confirm both are done, in that order.
“Visiting stopped entirely.” That is a modified-operations question, not a video question. When institution management restricts legal or social visiting after a significant or disruptive event, employees “must make all reasonable efforts to notify all known parties affected by the disruption,” expressly including inmate families and defense counsel, by telephone, email, or the institution’s webpage (PS 5267.09 CN-1 at p. 2). If nobody told you, that notification requirement is the thing to point at. See lockdowns and modified operations.
“They canceled our visit and nobody explained.” Ask which of three things happened: a disciplinary sanction, a temporary suspension by the Warden on reasonable suspicion, or an institution-wide interruption. The routes differ. A disciplinary loss of visiting is challenged through the discipline process; everything else runs through informal resolution and then the administrative remedy program, where a BP-9 is due within 20 calendar days of the event (28 C.F.R. § 542.14). See prison grievances and how to file a BP-9.
“He is in the SHU and we cannot see him at all.” Visiting privileges ordinarily continue in administrative detention or disciplinary segregation, though the Warden may impose special procedures (PS 5267.09 at p. 15). Segregation does cut off electronic messaging. See solitary confinement and special housing units.
Frequently Asked Questions About Video Visiting
Does the federal Bureau of Prisons offer video visitation?
Not as a nationwide program that every institution must provide. Neither the visiting regulations at 28 C.F.R. part 540, subpart D nor Program Statement 5267.09, Visiting Regulations, mentions video visiting anywhere. Some federal institutions do offer it under locally written procedures; the Bureau’s Trust Fund manual requires each institution’s local TRULINCS supplement to address “where applicable, video service procedures,” which confirms that availability is a facility-by-facility question (PS 4500.13 at p. 14). The Bureau announced in July 2026 that a new nationwide tablet platform will include video services, rolled out in phases.
How do I find out whether my loved one’s prison has video visiting?
Confirm the current facility with the Bureau’s inmate locator, then call that institution’s main number and ask directly whether video visiting is offered and whether it is covered in the institution supplement. Ask for the visiting lieutenant or the unit team if the switchboard cannot say. In parallel, have the incarcerated person submit an Inmate Request to Staff asking the unit manager for the visiting supplement and the TRULINCS supplement — that produces a dated, signed written answer. Institutions are required to publish days and hours of visitation and to notify families when the schedule is disrupted (PS 5267.09 at pp. 4–5).
Is a video visit private, or is it recorded?
Treat it as recorded and observed. Video visiting is a form of visiting, and the regulation requires staff to supervise every visit and permits the Warden to establish procedures for monitoring the visiting area, with notice to visitors and inmates (28 C.F.R. § 540.51(h)). Nothing in Bureau policy makes a video visit between an incarcerated person and a family member confidential. The only visits policy protects from auditory supervision are attorney visits, and those must be arranged as attorney visits — a family-portal video session is not one.
Can my lawyer meet with me by video instead of driving to the prison?
Only if the institution has a legal video arrangement, and it must be set up as an attorney visit rather than a social one. Bureau policy says staff “may not subject visits between an attorney and an inmate to auditory supervision” and that attorney visits should take place in a private conference room where practicable, arranged for visual supervision only (PS 5267.09 at p. 12). Note that even the 2023 Change Notice requiring facilities to develop “alternative legal access arrangements” after a disruption lasting more than 24 hours does not name videoconferencing among its examples. Counsel should ask the institution what remote legal-access options exist rather than assuming any.
Does a video visit count against the four hours of visiting time per month?
The regulation guarantees a floor, not a ceiling: the Warden “shall allow each inmate a minimum of four hours visiting time per month” (28 C.F.R. § 540.43). That guarantee is written for in-person visiting, and no national rule says a video session may be counted toward it or must be added on top of it. Because there is no national video rule at all, how a facility counts video time — if it offers it — is set in that institution’s supplement. Ask, and ask for it in writing.
Do I still need to be on the approved visiting list for a video visit?
At every facility we are aware of that offers it, yes — and you should assume so. Getting on the list is a Bureau process, not a vendor process: the incarcerated person mails you a BP-A0629 Visitor Information form, you complete it and mail it directly back to the named unit staff member, staff run a background check, and staff notify the incarcerated person, who then notifies you (PS 5267.09 at pp. 17–18). Background checks are regenerated every two years. Start that process early; it is slower than any vendor registration.
What is the difference between video visiting and the CARES Act video calls people talk about?
They are not the same thing, and conflating them is the single most common error in what is written about this subject. During the pandemic period the Bureau operated expanded remote-contact measures under separate operational guidance, which our explainer on video visiting and telephone calls under the CARES Act describes. Those were operational memoranda, not amendments to the visiting regulations, and they do not tell you what is available at a given institution today. The Visiting Regulations program statement itself has never contained a video provision.
Will tablets mean video calls from the housing unit?
The Bureau’s own words are that the new platform will include “secure messaging and video services” and that rollout “will occur in phases across BOP institutions.” It does not say what video services means operationally, who pays, what the session limits are, or when any particular facility gets it (BOP press release, 8 July 2026). We will not predict a date or a feature set, because the Bureau has not published one. What we can say is what exists in policy today, which is on our tablets in federal prison page.
Who charges for a video visit, the Bureau or a private company?
Both models exist, and you need to ask which one applies. Fees the Bureau sets — telephone rates and TRULINCS program fees — are national and are fixed by the Chief of the Trust Fund Branch with the Assistant Director for Administration’s concurrence (PS 4500.13 at pp. 55, 119). Charges by an outside video vendor are that company’s pricing, are not in Bureau policy, and change without notice. Ask the institution whether the charge falls on the outside party through a vendor portal or on the incarcerated person’s trust fund account, because that decides who has to have money in an account.
Are video visits available in the SHU, an SMU, or a mental-health unit?
This is the one context where Bureau policy explicitly contemplates videoconferencing — as a way to provide a non-contact visit rather than as an extra channel. In Special Management Units, “inmates may be provided non-contact visits, through the use of videoconferencing or other technology” (PS 5217.02 at p. 7), and the Secure Mental Health Units statement reissued in March 2026 says the same, with the institution deciding whether contact or non-contact visits are appropriate (PS 5335.02 at p. 19). Whether the technology actually exists at a given unit is still a local question.
If your family is working out how to stay in touch across all the available channels, start with staying in contact with someone in federal prison, which covers mail, telephone, messaging and visiting together. If you are new to this entirely, for families sequences the first month. The firm’s federal prison work is described at federal prison consulting services; you can reach us through the contact page.
Reviewed for legal accuracy by Elizabeth Franklin-Best, Esq., Principal Attorney·September 2026