My daughter is in prison.

When dealing with a child in jail there’s decisions you have to make. You have to decide if you’re going to bail them out or leave them there. You have to decide if you’re going to get them a lawyer or leave it up to the state. You have to decide if you’re going support them by putting money on their commissary. You have to decide if you’re going to allow them to call you. You have to decide if you want to be in contact at all with your child.
Most facilities have different ways to communicate with an inmate.

The cheapest and probably the easiest is the send them a letter. There are usually rules on what can be included and if they are allowed pictures ect. So be sure to check online on the Web page for the rules of the facility and see what’s allowed.

The next Cheapest way is to email. Most facilities have a way that you can send email and photos to an Inmate online. This is usually a monthly fee or a lump sum fee for certain number of Emails or photos some facilities allow short videos.

Telephone calls are another way to Communicate with an Inmate. You may put money on just your phone number so they’re able to only call you, or you can make it where they can call other people. You can put money in their commissary so they can purchase other things and they can also use that money to call you and other people depending on the facility. All facilities are different they usually charge by the minute it can become very expensive.

Another way to communicate with an inmate Is by video chat. You can go to the facility and do visitation which is usually done monitor to monitor in many facilities. We found this to be the case with our county jail. If you live close to the facility this can be your cheapest choice.

Some facilities have a program that you can download at home and can video chat with your inmate. From my understanding this is relatively expensive.

The last way to communicate with an inmate is by visitation. Not all facilities allow face to face visits. Be sure to check website of the facility before making any plans. Visiting a prison can be scary and stressful but it doesnt have to be if you do your research and prepare. I will be posting about visiting prision soon. Be sure to watch for it.

When your child is incarcerated another choice you have to make is whether or not to tell their children and if so how much to tell them. If you tell them you also have to decide if you’re going to allow them to communicate with their parent who’s incarcerated.
By going online to the facility’s website you will be able to find all your options for communicating. And information on bailing the inmate out. You can also look up the inmate to see how much their bond is, or if they have a bond. You can also see the charges that the inmate was arrested for.

There is a difference between jail and prison. Jail is usually in the county that they were arrested in. Jail is usually for those awaiting trial or short term incarcerations. Prison is where an inmate serves a sentence that is for longer than a year.

In jail there are a lot of incomings and out goings. There are meetings with lawyers and transports to court. Once you are transferred to prison you usually stay there until you have served your sentence. Sometimes you can be transferred to another facility for one teason or another. In our experience AD has been transferred numerous times because of fighting and gang situations. Another reason an inmate maybe transferred is to go to a medical facility. Inmates toward the end of their sentence may choose to go to work release.

This is my story these are the decisions that I made. I hope by reading this it’s able to help you see that you’re not alone if you are in a similar situation. If you’re reading this and you’re not in this type of situation I hope this helps you to understand what it feels like to be in this situation.

My daughter was arrested and taken to the county jail. After a couple weeks I bonded her out with her money. She was out of jail for 6 days before she was arrested again on more charges from the previous month. We decided not to bail her out again. During the time my daughter was in jail I knew that she had made a mistake a big one. She was still my daughter I still loved her and I hoped that she could change. I hooed that she could get and stay clean.

I put money on my phone number so that she could call and talk to the kids daily. I spoke with her often. She made promises and said how sorry she was. I even put some money on her commissary so she was able to get some necessities. I played go between for her and her lawyer. I sent her pictures of the kids through the mail so she would have something to hold onto. I also sent pictures by email so that she could see what they were doing on a regular basis. I did these things because I felt sorry for her and she really sounded sorry. I couldn’t imagine not seeing and talking to my children.

The children did not know that she was incarcerated. They were very young and they just believed that she was working. I put a special ringtone on my phone for when she called the kids would know it was her. I gave her a certain time every day to call which was right before bed time. If she was unable to call at that time then she did not get to speak to them that day. I also let the children color pictures for her and sent them to her in the mail.

After about 2 months my sister bailed her out. While she was out she promised to help with the kids get a job and stay away from people that used drugs. She promised to stay with her dad and help him when she could. She made lots of promises that she didn’t keep.

She was arrested again after being out for about 2 1/2 months. She was arrested for a failure to keep the release agreement. She was using drugs and failed a drug test.

At that point she was incarcerated again. Things were totally different than before. She had the chance to show me that she had changed and all she showed me was that she got worse. She went 8 days without checking on her children. So I decided that funding a daily phone call was not going to happen. I no longer felt sorry for her. She was given a second chance and she blew it. I warned her that if she used drugs and was arrested again that I was done. We gave her plenty of chances and offered for her to go to rehab. Everyone tried to get her to go DCF, her lawyer, family, everyone! She chose to hang out with known drug users and she chose to use drugs again. It’s hard to use tough love but I felt that this was the time for it. I love my child enough to not enable her. I also love her children enough to not put them through the up and downs of their mother’s addiction. For that reason there was very minimum communication with my daughter during that time. I had answered her phone call a few times. The 1st was when she was arrested and I wanted to be able to tell her where her car was because I did take care of that for her and moved it. While on the phone she tried to deny everything. She told me it must be some kind of mistake or maybe she had blacked out. She again told me that she was not using drugs. I knew this was not true because I spoke to the arresting officer and she had tested positive. I let her tell the kids that she loved them because I wasn’t sure when I was going to answer the phone again. She attempted to call me over the next couple days but there was no money on my phone. The 4th day when she called I attempted to answer it knowing that there was no money but it turned out it was a free phone call because she was in booking. She was being charged with a second count of failure to keep the agreement of release. She had multiple open cases and was bonded out on two which is why she was charged twice. When I answered she was crying and she kept saying she was sorry . I gave her Her lawyers phone number and her aunt’s phone numbers that she asked me for. She wanted to talk and tell me what happened and I didn’t want to listen. It hurt me to have to listen to her lies. I think what hurts the most is that she believes her lies. About a week later after a few times trying to call me and I didn’t answer she was able to get through because there was money that her dad put on her commissary. So she was able to call me. She wanted her lawyer’s address and her aunt’s addresses so that she could write them. She asked if the kids were home and I told her no they were at school. She told me how much she missed the kids and I told her how much I had missed the kids when she wouldn’t let me see them, I told her how much I miss the kids when she didn’t bring them around for Thanksgiving. She was crying and apologizing and I said but what I miss the most is my daughter. The hardest part of this for me is that my daughter used to be my best friend. I asked her to please do what she needed to do to get her life straightened out so that I can have my daughter back and I hung up the phone. She continued to attempt to call but i never picked up. I hurt me so much to know if I answered she would only tell me lies. I missed my daughter but the person in jail was not my daughter she was a drug addict.

I sent her a letter in the mail I told her that I would put money on the phone for holidays. She could call and talk to the kids and that I didn’t want to talk to her. I wrote that I would email pictures of the kids occasionly showing what they are doing. I include a few pictures of the kids in the letter so that she would have something to hold onto. I also included a copy of my article titled drug addict my story maybe it will help her to understand where I am coming from.

She called again just a couple days later and asked to talk to the kids we happened to be in the van we were on our way home from a fall festival. I let her talk to them so that she could hear all the things that they are doing and that she’s missing out on. I wanted her to figure out what being a parent means.

At that time she was living in her own reality, her words. She was delusional on what the truth really was and did not have full comprehension of what she had done to her children. She said that reality is just too hard. I hoped that she would able to get help while she was incarcerated.

I felt a little bit better knowing that she was locked up becaue at that point at least I knew that she was not going to use drugs and drive, or overdose. I knew she wasn’t selling and putting herself in dangerous situations. Her being incarcerated took a little bit of the worry way.

Just because I cut off communication with her for a while doesn’t mean that I didn’t love her, it just meant that I loved her more.

The children were not asking for her. They didn’t ask if she was coming over. Sometimes if my phone rang they would ask if that’s their mom only because the last time she disappeared she called on a regular basis.

The kids didn’t know what was going on it was a good thing they were so young. If you asked them where their mother was they would tell you that she’s at grandpa’s house or at work. I believed that they were too young to understand what jail is.

When telling the children where mommy was we planned to be as truthful as possible but keeping it in a way that they would understand. We started by telling them she was in adult time out. Now they know she is in jail/ prison.

She did go to a rehab in prison once she was transferred to prison. She took a plea deal and was sentenced to 3 years in a state prison.

Since rehab and a few parenting classes and a lot of counseling she is doing much better.

She now lives in reality. She realises just how horrible she was. She apologizes regularly and continues to thank us everytime we talk. We now talk once a week on the phone. She calls and talks to the kids once a week too. She has changed a lot over the last year and half being in prison. She is now doing whats best for her children.

We have been to see her twice I will be posting soon about our visits to prison.

Remember to check with the facility to see what is available.

Also watch our YouTube episode about jail found here

I Will continue to tell my story in hopes that it helps someone who’s going through the same situation. Please know that you’re not alone. Be sure to like my post and follow me.
As always feel free to leave a comment or ask a question.