You can have texting ready to go before your person ever walks through the door at the facility. The work happens on your side in the weeks before self-surrender: find them in the system, start a plan, and make sure they know the one thing they have to do on the inside. Done early, the first message can reach them as soon as they get to a TRULINCS terminal. Left until surrender day, the setup usually stalls for a week or more while everyone guesses at the next step.
Here is the order that works, and where families usually get stuck.
Start with the register number, not the plan
Everything downstream depends on one identifier: the BOP register number, the one formatted like 12345-678. If your person has already been sentenced and designated, that number exists. Look it up with the BOP inmate locator on bop.gov using their name and age, or ask their attorney or the case manager who handled the designation.
Write it down somewhere you will not lose it. You will need it to find them in InmateDB, and they will be asked for it on the inside too. Families who skip this step end up searching by name on surrender day and finding three people with the same name.
One honest limit: ParakeetInmate, powered by InmateDB, works with federal Bureau of Prisons facilities that use CorrLinks, which covers about 93% of federal facilities. It does not work in state prisons or county jails. If the designation is still pending, wait for it before you commit to anything.
Do the family-side setup while they are still home
The account is yours, so build it before they leave. Go to the InmateDB search, find your person by name or register number, and start the 3-day free trial or choose a plan. You do not need to install an app; replies come through your normal texting app, and you can also use the InmateDB website, the InmateDB app or Telegram if you prefer.
Then walk through the plan choice with your person sitting next to you, because it changes what they can do:
- Texting, $9.99/month. Messages go out from a shared number, so people can reply once the inmate has texted them first. Fine for a small circle.
- Texting + AI, $14.99/month. Adds AI chat with ChatGPT, Gemini and Grok, plus news, sports, weather and trivia apps.
- Full Access, $19.99/month. Adds a personal phone number anyone can text first, plus email and 15+ more apps. This is the one to pick if you want extended family or friends to be able to reach out without waiting to be texted first.
If you are unsure which number setup fits your family, the comparison in a personal phone number for an inmate is worth ten minutes before you pay for anything.
The one step only your person can do inside
This is where setups die. You can do everything on your end and still get nothing, because the inmate has to add one InmateDB contact in TRULINCS from a facility terminal. You cannot do it for them, and staff will not do it for them.
So make it concrete before they go. Tell them, in plain words: when you get to a TRULINCS terminal, add the InmateDB contact, and after that you text by putting a phone number in the subject line and the message in the body. Have them repeat it back. Write it on the back of the paperwork they are allowed to carry in, if the facility permits it, or have them memorize those two lines.
Expect the first attempt to be clumsy. People forget the subject line, or put the message in the subject and leave the body blank, or add the contact and then not return to a terminal for a while. None of that is a crisis. It just costs time.
Write the first messages now, so they are waiting
Draft a handful of short messages on your phone before surrender day and save them as notes. The first days inside are disorienting, and a wall of text is hard to absorb from a shared terminal. Keep them to a few lines: who is thinking of them, one piece of ordinary news, one question they can answer easily.
Do not send anything you would not want a staff member to read. Facility staff can monitor messages. That is not a reason to write nothing; it is a reason to keep the tone steady and save the sensitive conversations for visits or calls.
How fast they see a reply depends entirely on when they can get to a TRULINCS terminal. Some days that is quick, some days it is not. Plan for a rhythm rather than a real-time chat, and read how inmate messaging works if you want the full picture before you explain it to anyone else in the family.
Set expectations with the rest of the family
The week after surrender is when cousins and coworkers start asking how to reach him. Get ahead of it. Decide who is on the plan, tell them what number messages will come from, and explain that with the $9.99 and $14.99 plans they cannot text first; they can only reply once he has texted them. If that will cause friction, the $19.99 plan solves it with a personal number.
Also decide now who handles photos and letters. Families upload up to 10 photos per order, and standard or glossy prints are printed and mailed to the facility. Typed or uploaded letters are printed and mailed too, at $1.49 for the first page and $0.30 for each page after. Splitting those tasks across two or three people keeps one person from carrying all of it. If you are weighing which channel to lean on, inmate email vs texting lays out the tradeoffs without overselling either.
What to check the week of surrender
In the last few days, run a short checklist. Confirm the register number is correct. Confirm your plan is active and you know which number messages will come from. Confirm your person can say the TRULINCS step out loud. Confirm at least one other family member knows how to reply.
For anything policy-related, go to the source. Visiting rules, contact limits, what they can bring, money transfers and mail rules all live at bop.gov or with the specific facility, and they vary. Do not rely on a Facebook group for those answers, including this one.
Quick answers
Can we set this up before he has a register number?
Wait for the number. It comes with the designation, and it is what makes the search reliable. Ask the attorney or the case manager if you are not sure whether designation has happened yet.
What if the facility does not use CorrLinks?
About 93% of federal facilities do. If yours is in the other group, or if your person is in a state prison or county jail, this service will not reach them, and you should ask the facility what messaging options they allow.
How long until the first message gets through?
It depends on when your person can get to a TRULINCS terminal after adding the contact. Your side can be ready in an afternoon; their side moves on the facility’s schedule, not yours.
The single most useful thing you can do this week is confirm the register number and get your account started so the only remaining step belongs to them. Find your loved one and you will know within a few minutes whether the setup will work.