--- title: "How Inmates Keep Up With News and Sports From the Inside" slug: "inmates-news-sports-apps-inbox" description: "How inmates keep up with news and sports inside federal prison: news, sports and weather apps that deliver headlines and scores to their messaging inbox." canonical: "https://parakeetinmate.com/inmates-news-sports-apps-inbox/" markdown_url: "https://parakeetinmate.com/inmates-news-sports-apps-inbox.md" type: "blog" category: "Blog" published_at: "2026-10-29T17:50:24+00:00" updated_at: "2026-10-29T17:50:24+00:00" robots: "index,follow" --- # How Inmates Keep Up With News and Sports From the Inside Inmates keep up with news and sports the same way they keep up with family: through messages that reach them in the facility's email system. With a messaging plan that includes news, sports and weather apps, the headlines, scores and forecasts land in the same inbox where your texts arrive, and the inmate reads them the next time they get to a TRULINCS terminal. No phone, no television, no separate account. If your family member has been asking what happened in the game or whether a storm is heading toward home, this is the practical way to get that to them. Here is how it works, what to set up first, and where it usually goes wrong. ## Why the inbox is the right place for it Federal inmates don't carry phones. They send and receive electronic messages from TRULINCS terminals inside the facility, and CorrLinks is the outside half of that system. Anything you want them to read has to arrive as a message they can open at a terminal. That is the whole reason news and sports belong in the inbox rather than in a separate product. A scores app that requires its own login, its own device or its own facility approval is a dead end. A scores update that shows up as a message in the account they already check is not. ParakeetInmate, powered by InmateDB, handles this on the family side. The news, sports and weather apps are part of the Texting + AI plan at $14.99/month, which also adds AI chat with ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok and a trivia app. The $9.99/month Texting plan covers messages only. The $19.99/month Full Access plan adds a personal phone number anyone can text first, email, and 15+ more apps. New accounts start with a 3-day free trial, so you can see how the apps behave before you commit. ## What the apps actually give them The point of these apps is not to recreate a news website. It is to answer the questions people in prison actually ask: what happened, who won, and what is the weather doing where my family lives. - **News.** Headlines on what is happening outside, so a conversation with you doesn't start with them asking what they missed. - **Sports.** Scores and results, which is the thing most inmates ask about first. Following a team from inside is possible when the score reaches them as a message. - **Weather.** Forecasts for the area their family is in. This matters more than it sounds. A parent watching a storm warning for their kid's town is a real use, not a novelty. - **Trivia.** Something to do with the information, and a reason to message back and forth about it. Be honest with yourself about the limit: this is not live coverage. They read it when they next get to a terminal, and how soon that is depends entirely on the facility's schedule and how much terminal time is available. If a game ends at night, they may read about it the following day. Plan your messages accordingly and don't expect them to react in real time. ## Setting it up so the apps reach them There are two halves to this, and both have to be done before anything arrives. 1. **You set up the account.** Find your loved one on InmateDB by name or BOP register number and start the trial or a plan. If you don't have the register number, it looks like 12345-678 and you can find it with the BOP inmate locator on bop.gov. 2. **They add one contact in TRULINCS.** This is the step families most often skip, and nothing works until it is done. The inmate adds a single InmateDB contact inside the facility's system. 3. **They text by subject line.** After that, messages work by putting a phone number in the subject line and the message in the body. That is the format; it isn't optional. Once that is in place, the apps feed into the same inbox. You don't need to install anything on your end: you can reply from your normal texting app, the InmateDB website, the InmateDB app, or Telegram if you prefer. One caution that saves a lot of frustration: this works with federal Bureau of Prisons facilities that use CorrLinks, roughly 93% of them. It does not work in state prisons or county jails. If your person is in a state facility, ask the facility directly what electronic messaging they allow, because the answer will be different. ## What usually goes wrong the first time The most common failure is expecting the news to arrive before the contact is added in TRULINCS. The family signs up, waits, and hears nothing, and assumes the service is broken. It isn't. The inmate side of the setup has to happen first, and it happens when they can get to a terminal. The second is format. A message sent without the phone number in the subject line doesn't go through the way you expect. If your first few texts seem to vanish, check the format before you check anything else. The third is timing. Families sometimes send five messages in an evening and then worry when there is no reply. Replies come when the inmate reaches a terminal. That may not be the same day. And one honest note on privacy: facility staff can monitor messages. Treat everything you send, including anything generated through the apps, as something a staff member could read. Don't put anything sensitive in a message that you wouldn't want read aloud. ## Making it useful instead of noise A wall of headlines is less valuable than a short, specific message. If your father follows a college team, a one-line note about the final score does more than a general news digest. If your family is under a weather warning, say so plainly and tell them what you're doing about it, because that is the part they actually care about. The apps give them a way to look things up themselves, which takes some of the burden off you to be the family news service. Use that. Let them ask the app what the score was, and use your own messages for the things only you can tell them. If you are still working out the basics of the account, our guide to [finding your loved one and starting a plan](https://inmatedb.com/search) covers the setup, and if the contact step is where you're stuck, the walkthrough on [adding the InmateDB contact in TRULINCS](https://inmatedb.com/search) goes through it in order. Families comparing plan levels will find the difference laid out in [shared number versus personal number](https://inmatedb.com/search), since that choice affects who can start a conversation. ## Quick answers ### Can they really follow a team from inside? Yes, through scores and results delivered as messages they read at a terminal. It won't be live, and how current it is depends on when they next get terminal time, so treat it as a recap rather than play-by-play. ### Do I need to install an app for this? No. You can reply from your normal texting app, the InmateDB website, the InmateDB app, or Telegram. The apps on the inmate's side run through the messaging account, not through anything you install. ### Which plan includes news, sports and weather? The Texting + AI plan at $14.99/month. The $9.99/month plan is texting only, and Full Access at $19.99/month adds a personal number, email and 15+ more apps on top. The 3-day free trial lets you test it first. The next step is simple: look up your loved one, start the trial, and get the TRULINCS contact added so the first score or forecast has somewhere to land. [Find your loved one](https://inmatedb.com/search) to begin.