This is actually the section of the book on self reporting.  It is pretty typical of how the book is written……………

 

Preparing To Enter Prison

 

You really need to prepare yourself.  You need to get ready like you are going on a trip for a few years and not coming home, which you are.  There are things that you need to do that are easier to do from the outside than from the inside.

 

First, go to the dentist; get everything fixed and your teeth cleaned; then go to your optometrist and get a new pair of glasses.  I would suggest getting glasses if you normally wear contacts since it may be a while before you can get contact solution inside (at least several days or longer; if you can even get it).  You can try and get contacts sent in after you get inside. 

 

Get every legal affair you can in order.  If you have to deal with the I.R.S. you will need to have a special Power of Attorney to handle any of your incarcerated spouse’s affairs.  A Form 2848 must be executed and without this form the I.R.S. will not even talk to you about any financial dealing that concerns your spouse.  Do your taxes (don’t give them a reason to take you back again).  Give a power of attorney to someone to handle your business affairs. 

 

Get a joint checking account with someone you really trust in case you get checks in your name for something.  You need to open the account BEFORE you go inside too.  If you have a bank that adheres to the strict letter of the law, you will not be able to open a new account in your Inmate Spouses Name.  A Bank Officer must physically see all individuals on an account and view them getting their signatures at the time the account is opened.  This is part of the "New Homeland Security Act" and while you may find a local branch that may not do this, it is going to be hard to find one.  Get it done before they go inside.

 

If you have a Post Office box to get your mail at, see if you can pay the rent as far in advance as possible and give the key to a trusted friend.  Also let the people at the Post Office know who will be coming in to get your mail.  One that nobody thinks of is your Driver’s License.  If you can; renew it for as long as possible.  Hopefully you will be out before it expires.  If not, you are going to have to take a written test and a road test in most states.  You will feel strange being the only one in the line with no zits.

 

As soon as you figure out where you are going and get your Federal inmate number and send in money orders[1] to start your inmate trust account.  I suggest an initial deposit of $690 which makes sure that you have money to spend at the Commissary as soon as you get there.  You can send more or less, but the minimum I would send would be $690[2].

 

You are probably going to want to write a lot of letters (since there really isn’t much else to do), so mail yourself a list of names and addresses[3] even before you report so they are there waiting for you.  Don’t send an actual address book since they are not going to allow it in.  If you want an actual book, you can get one from the Commissary, you are going to have plenty of time to copy addresses into it.

 

Another thing to do is head off to the nearest used book store and buy yourself a lot of books.  They need to be paperback, not hardbacks.  Even if you don’t read much, you will be by the time you get done.  It’s better that you pick them, rather than having someone try and find something you may like.  I’d buy at least one book for every week you are sentenced to.  You can have them mailed in to you later.[4]

 

I generally recommend making a deposit of money for your commissary account as soon as you can[5].  Also you may want to bring some money with you to be absolutely sure it gets on your “books”.  FCI Morgantown will let you bring in up to $700 cash and they will put it on your books and it will be available for you to spend as soon as you get there.  There may be some local variations on this, so you should call the prison first and see if they will take a deposit for your inmate trust account and what form they want it in (cash, Postal Money Order, etc).

 

Also, while you are at it, get your High School and College Diplomas out and mail copies of them to yourself.  Even if they are mentioned in your PSI[6] it’s better to have them, or you may find yourself working on a GED, even if you were a physician a few months before.  Trust me on this one, it happens.

What to Bring With You 

When you turn yourself in, what do you bring with you?  Contrary to what you have previously heard, BRING BASICALLY NOTHING.  As you will see below, there is very little you can take with you, but you need to get ready.

 

In my experience, almost everything you bring with you will get mailed home.  You need to know the address to mail it to.  The clothes that you wear in will be mailed back to your home or other address you want at BOP expense.  So tell your spouse to expect them.  Sometimes the wife is “shocked” when she gets an unexpected parcel with your clothes in them.  If you want you can “donate” them to the prison and they will be given to inmates who are leaving who did not have clothes.  Possibly a CO may take a nice item of your clothing home, or lose them or simply toss them in the garbage.  So I do suggest that you report wearing clothes that you would be willing to throw in the garbage, you may never see them again.

 

The exceptions for what you can bring in are for eyeglasses, a pair of earrings (for females only, small and simple worth less than $50), a wedding band (worth less than $50, no stones in it), eyeglasses and necessary medical devices; I brought my CPAP breathing machine with me; they do have them, but theirs are old and nasty and who is going to adjust the pressure in Prison?

 

I’ve heard many times that you can keep your watch and a pair of white sneakers.  That may apply to State Prison or County Jail, but not to the Feds[7].  We get to wear a Timex Iron Man watch on the inside (you buy it for $36.55 or so); sneakers are generally simple white ones, nothing fancy and you buy them too.  Nobody I’ve ever talked to has been allowed to keep anything. 

 

If you wear non-prescription drug store reading glasses bring them too.  My understanding is that glasses do not have to be prescription.  They will never know the difference  and you can always say “My Optometrist told me to go to the Drug Store and buy some reading glasses”.  That’s a prescription isn’t it?  I may also suggest that if you know the power of them, you buy a few spare pairs and leave them at home.  That way, if you need them in future, you can ask to have a pair of glasses mailed in by your family.  Your family will already have the correct kind to mail into you.  This is planning in advance.

 

They will let you keep your “legal documents” (but not your PSI).  So if you have any legal documents, try writing some phone numbers and addresses on them to get them in.  It may get in and it may not, but more than likely it will get in.

 

For prescription medicine, I recommend this.  Take it the morning you are turning yourself in.  Bring either empty bottles or bottles that have a single day’s supply of them.  Why?  If they don’t have your medicine, they might let you take them for one more day after which they will have something.  They are going to take it away from you and you are only going to get the empties back.  In my case the Regional Jail did send the bottles with drugs in them to the Feds when I left (the Marshals carried them).  When I left Federal Prison, I got my empty bottles back and the Feds were supposed to have given me 30 days worth of medicine.  They didn’t.  I did get like 3 or 4 days worth from the Regional Jail.  I had to get to my doctor fast to get something to take when I finally got out.

 

While they are going to put you on something similar to what you were taking[8], they didn’t have anything for one of the medicines in stock when I got there, so they let me take my regular medicine for one extra day.

 

The reason you can’t bring in your own medicine from the outside is pretty obvious.  They don’t want strange drugs coming into the system.

 

Do not bring your PSI with you or mail it to yourself.  They will have a copy and you do not want anyone reading yours.  Why?  It will show if you cooperated with them or not.  In camps or low security it probably doesn’t matter, since most people cooperated with the feds.  The problem really comes in medium or high when you are in with “real criminals”.  The same goes for the Federal Transfer Center at Oklahoma City, not a good place for a PSI.  At the higher levels, cooperation with the Feds can cause you to get hurt.

 

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[1] Look at www.BOP.Gov Inmate Locator for your inmate number.  Money Orders must be from the Post Office; now you are limited to sending in $300 a day so you are going to have to get at least 3 money orders.  Just for the record, I have also been told on several occasions you can only send in a maximum of $299 per day, but $300 has always worked for me.

[2] Read the Commissary and Restitution sections for more information

[3] Many Prisons do have eMail, so send eMail addresses too

[4] For mailing paperback books, see page 156

[5] See the Inmate Trust Account section on page 119

[6] PreSentence Investigation

[7] Inside Prison, anything that is different than the “norm” will have extra value.  So if they allow you to bring in a different watch, then it is possible for you to sell it or trade it for more than a “regular” prison watch; which means you can make money from it, which is like being allowed extra “funds” in the prison.  So it’s something you can’t do.

[8] I was taking medicine for High Blood Pressure.

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            There are over 250+ more pages of information that is written and 150 pages of documents (A&O Manual, Halfway House Manuals, Commissary Lists, etc.) that will make the transition from the street to the inside a lot easier..........