Does InmateAid Work for Federal Prison Phone Calls?

Yes, InmateAid can still help reduce your call costs even at a federal facility, just through a different mechanism than state and county jails.

The federal Bureau of Prisons operates its own self-contained phone system called TruLinks. No outside phone providers are competing for BOP contracts the way there are at state and county facilities. Instead, inmates fund their TruLinks account through Western Union deposits, and they move money between telephone, commissary, and email from that single account. Calls are paid for directly from those funds rather than through a prepaid account set up by family members.

Here is where InmateAid creates value in the federal system: TruLinks charges local rate calls at six cents per minute and long-distance calls at twenty-one cents per minute. That difference is significant if you are on a long-distance number. InmateAid can provide a local forwarding number that routes calls to your phone, so your husband dials a local number and you receive the call wherever you are. Paying six cents per minute instead of twenty-one cents per minute adds up quickly over the course of a sentence.

The exception language in the agreement refers to the funding structure, not to whether the service has value. It does.