How to Write Someone in Jail: Address, Contraband, and E-Messages

To write someone in jail, use plain white paper and a blue or black pen, address the envelope with the person’s full legal name and inmate ID number along with your complete return address, and leave out anything decorative or scented that mail room screening will treat as contraband. The rules vary by facility, but those basics get a letter through almost anywhere. The details below are where letters usually go wrong.

How to Address the Envelope

A missing inmate ID number is the most common reason mail gets returned. Every facility assigns each person a unique identification number, and mail room staff use it to route letters to the right housing unit. Without it, your letter sits in limbo or comes back to you.

The envelope needs four things:

The recipient’s full legal name as it appears on their booking record, not a nickname.
Their inmate ID or register number. Federal register numbers can be looked up on the Bureau of Prisons inmate locator at bop.gov. State and county facilities have their own lookup tools, usually on the facility or state Department of Corrections website.¹
The facility’s full mailing address from its official website. Some institutions use a P.O. Box that differs from the physical address.
Your complete return address. In the federal system this is explicitly required, and most state and county jails follow the same rule. Mail without a return address gets rejected.²

A properly addressed envelope looks like this:

Your Name
Your Street Address
Your City, State, ZIP

Recipient’s Full Legal Name, ID #12345
Name of Correctional Facility
Facility Street Address or P.O. Box
City, State, ZIP

Use a plain white envelope with no markings, drawings, or decorations on the outside.

How to Write the Letter

Use plain white paper and write in blue or black ink. Some facilities accept lined notebook paper, but plain white is universally safe. Pencil is prohibited at certain facilities because graphite can be used to defeat some security measures, so ink is the better default.

Content-wise, you have wide latitude. Write about your day, share family updates, ask questions, tell jokes. What gets flagged is content discussing criminal activity, escape plans, threats, coded language, or anything staff could interpret as facilitating illegal conduct.³ Writing about someone’s legal case in general terms is fine, but avoid anything that reads like you’re coordinating strategy with witnesses or trying to influence proceedings from inside.

Make sure the envelope has enough postage. A standard first-class stamp covers a one-ounce letter, about four to five sheets of paper. If you’re including photos where allowed, weigh the envelope or take it to the post office to avoid having it returned for insufficient postage.

What Not to Put Inside

Screening rules exist to keep drugs and other contraband out of housing units, and the list of things that trigger rejection is longer than most people realize. The federal Bureau of Prisons authorizes staff to reject any correspondence that contains contraband, threatens security, or includes content that could encourage criminal activity or group disruption.³ County jails and state prisons follow similar principles but set their own specific restrictions, so check the facility’s website or call before sending anything.

Items that commonly get mail rejected:

Stickers, tape, glue, glitter, return address labels, and anything with raised or padded surfaces. These are treated as potential hiding spots for drugs.
Perfume, cologne, lipstick marks, or any substance applied to the paper. Facilities test for chemicals, and strong scents can flag a letter for additional screening or outright rejection.
Electronic greeting cards, padded cards, or anything that would need to be torn apart to search. These get returned to sender.²
Cash, credit cards, identification cards, and checks. Money has to go through the facility’s approved deposit process, not regular mail.
Sexually explicit photos that facility staff determine pose a threat to security or good order. These are treated as contraband and returned.²

Photos, Drawings, and Books

Regular photographs are generally allowed, but rules about size and format vary. Polaroids are widely prohibited because the layered film can conceal substances. Stick with standard printed photos and check the facility’s size limit before sending a stack.

Children’s drawings done in crayon, marker, or paint are rejected at many facilities. The reasoning is that waxy or thick media can be used to smuggle drugs. If a child wants to send artwork, photograph or scan the drawing and print it on plain paper.

Books are stricter. In the federal system, hardcover books and newspapers must come directly from a publisher, book club, or bookstore at all security levels. Softcover books and magazines follow the same rule at medium-security, high-security, and administrative facilities. Only minimum and low-security federal institutions allow softcover publications from any source.⁴ In practical terms, you generally can’t buy a book at a garage sale and mail it yourself. Order from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or a publisher and have it shipped directly to the facility. Orders from third-party marketplace sellers sometimes get rejected because the package doesn’t clearly come from an authorized retailer.

Facility staff can reject a publication that threatens security, but they cannot reject something solely because its content is religious, political, philosophical, or unpopular, and they cannot maintain blanket banned-book lists. Each publication must be reviewed individually.⁴ If a book is rejected, the recipient can challenge the decision through the facility’s grievance process.

Sending an Electronic Message Instead

Most facilities now contract with a communications vendor that offers electronic messaging, and in many cases this is faster than postal mail. The two dominant platforms are JPay and ViaPath (formerly GTL/ConnectNetwork). Create a free account on the vendor’s website or app, search for the facility, and purchase electronic “stamps” or credits.

On JPay, one stamp lets you type up to 6,000 characters per message, roughly six handwritten pages.⁵ Stamp prices vary by facility. Some platforms let you attach photos or e-cards for an additional stamp. Messages are not instant; facility staff review them before delivery, which can take anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days.

Electronic messages are monitored the same way physical mail is. Anything you write through these platforms can be read by facility staff and potentially used in disciplinary or legal proceedings.

A Note on Legal Mail

If you’re an attorney writing your client, your correspondence qualifies as “special mail” with additional protections. Special mail from attorneys, courts, members of Congress, and certain government officials cannot be read by staff. It can only be opened in the recipient’s presence and inspected for physical contraband.⁶ These protections only apply when the sender is clearly identified on the envelope with name, title, and address, and the front is marked “Special Mail—Open only in the presence of the inmate.” Miss either element and staff can treat the letter as regular correspondence.⁷

If you’re not an attorney, none of that applies to you. Staff can and likely will read your letter, and there is no privilege protecting the content. Keep that in mind before putting anything sensitive on paper, especially details about a pending case, witnesses, or defense strategy.

What Happens After You Send It

Every piece of incoming general correspondence gets opened and inspected by mail room staff. Federal regulations let staff read incoming mail as frequently as they consider necessary to maintain security or monitor a particular situation involving the recipient.³ In practice, not every letter gets read word-for-word. High-volume facilities often do a visual scan for contraband and a quick check for obvious red flags.

Some facilities have moved to digitizing all incoming mail. Staff scan the contents, and the recipient reads a printed copy or views the scanned images on a tablet. The original letter may be destroyed or stored. This practice has grown as facilities try to prevent drug-soaked paper from entering housing units. If the facility uses this system, the person you’re writing to won’t receive your original handwriting, only a copy.

Delivery timelines range from a few days to over a week after the letter arrives at the facility, depending on mail volume and staffing. If your letter is rejected, most facilities return it to you with a notation explaining why. Serious contraband found in mail, like illegal drugs or weapons, is not returned. It’s retained as evidence and referred to investigators.²

If the person has been transferred, the facility is required to redirect the mail when the forwarding address is known. If there’s no forwarding address, the letter goes back to the post office and returns to you.⁸ Transfers happen without much warning, so if mail starts coming back, check the facility’s inmate locator to find the person’s updated location.

If You Send Contraband

Sending contraband into a correctional facility is a federal crime, and potentially a state crime as well. Under federal law, anyone who introduces or attempts to introduce prohibited objects into a prison faces penalties that scale with the item. A firearm or destructive device carries up to 20 years. Drugs or alcohol can mean up to 10 years. A cell phone or other communications device carries up to one year. Even items that seem minor, like unauthorized food or clothing, can result in up to six months of imprisonment.⁹

Most people who get letters rejected aren’t facing criminal charges; they sent a greeting card with glitter or included a few photos over the size limit. The stakes change fast if the prohibited item is drugs, and facilities have become increasingly sophisticated at detecting substances applied to paper. Drug sentences under this statute must run consecutively to any other sentence, meaning they stack rather than running at the same time.⁹ Sending prohibited items can also cost the recipient mail privileges or lead to disciplinary action inside the facility, even if they had nothing to do with what was sent.

When in doubt about whether something is allowed, leave it out. A letter with nothing but your words on plain paper will always get through.

1
Federal Bureau of Prisons. Inmate Locator
2
Federal Bureau of Prisons. Mail Management Manual Program Statement 5800.016
3
eCFR. 28 CFR 540.14 – General Correspondence
4
eCFR. 28 CFR Part 540 Subpart F – Incoming Publications
5
JPay. Sending Email FAQ
6
eCFR. 28 CFR 540.18 – Special Mail
7
eCFR. 28 CFR 540.12 – Controls and Procedures
8
United States Postal Service. Customer Support Ruling – Mail Addressed to Prisoners
9
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 1791 – Providing or Possessing Contraband in Prison