Welcome to Spodek Law Group. Our goal is to give you the reality of federal prison email - not the sanitized "how-to-guide" version other websites provide, not the Bureau of Prisons' carefully worded policy statements, but the actual truth about what happens when you click "agree" on Corrlinks. Because what you don't understand about this system could extend your loved one's sentence, destroy your attorney-client privilege, and hand prosecutors evidence they never had to work for.
Here is the part every other article leaves out: Corrlinks is not a communication tool. It is a monetized surveillance system. Every single message you send is read by correctional staff, stored permanently in federal databases, accessible to prosecutors without a warrant, and used - in documented cases - to add years to sentences. You are not emailing your loved one. You are creating a prosecution file while paying a private company for the privilege of building it.
The federal Bureau of Prisons contracts with a private company called Advanced Technologies Group to operate TRULINCS - the Trust Fund Limited Inmate Computer System. When your loved one sends you an invitation from prison, and you create your free Corrlinks account, you are interacting with a private corporation that profits from incarcerated people and their families. Nothing about this arrangement prioritizes your communication. Everything about it prioritizes control, revenue, and surveillance.
What Nobody Tells You Before You Click "Agree"
When you create your Corrlinks account, theres a warning you probably scrolled past. Most people do. The language is buried in the terms you had to accept before you could email the person you love. Let me read it to you becuase it matters.
"By accessing and using this computer, I am consenting to such monitoring and information retrieval for law enforcement and other purposes. I have no expectation of privacy as to any communication on or information stored within the system."
Read that again. Slower. "No expectation of privacy." "Law enforcement purposes." "Any communication." You didnt just agree to let them see what you write. You agreed that you have no legal expectation of privacy whatsoever. And heres were people get confused - this applies to attorney-client communications too.
The TRULINCS acknowledgment specificaly states: "I understand and consent that this provision applies to electronic messages both to and from my attorney or other legal representative, and that such electronic messages will not be treated as privileged communications." You clicked agree to waive attorney-client privilege. For every message. Forever. Without even realizing what you gave up.
As Todd Spodek explains to clients preparing for federal incarceration, the decision to use Corrlinks should never be made without understanding these consequences. Most families dont even know there is a decision to make. They just click through to get to their loved one. That desperation is exactly what the system counts on.
The Math Nobody Wants You To Calculate
Federal inmates earn starting wages of $0.12 per hour. Thats twelve cents. For an hours work. Meanwhile, TRULINCS charges inmates five cents per minute for email access - not per message, per minute. That means the time to read your email, compose a response, and send it back costs actual money from their commissary account.
Lets do the math nobody wants you thinking about. A thirty cent email costs your loved one two and a half hours of prison labor at minimum wage. Not an exageration. Not hyperbole. Basic arithmetic.
And its getting worse. In 2024, the cost was about twenty-five cents per message. In 2025, its thirty cents. Prices going up. Wages staying the same. The gap between what they earn and what they pay keeps widening. Meanwhile, the private company running the system has zero incentive to lower prices. Where else are inmates going to go?
Printing costs fifteen cents per page. If your loved one wants a paper copy of your email - maybe to read later in their cell, maybe to save for when they feel lonely - thats another charge. Everything costs something. Every interaction monetized.
Some inmates spend $500 per month on email. Thats their entire commissary budget going to a private company just so they can stay connected to people who love them. Its not optional. There is no alternative. No competition. One company. One contract. Take it or dont communicate. That is the definition of a captive market being exploited.
For you, the family member, Corrlinks is technicaly free. You dont pay per message. But you pay in other ways. Your time logged into their system. Your data collected. Your consent given. And the knowledge that every word you send could appear in a federal document someday, with your name attached, used against someone you were trying to support.
How Prosecutors Turn Your Love Letters Into Evidence
Stop. Read this part carefully. This is the part you actualy need to understand.
In November 2011, former Pennsylvania State Senator Vincent Fumo had six months added to his federal sentence. Not for something he did in prison. For emails. Corrlinks emails. He had written messages criticizing the prosecutors who convicted him, the reporters who covered his trial, the jury that found him guilty. He was venting. He was frustrated. He was human.
Every single word was stored. Reviewed. Forwarded to the prosecution. They cited those emails in their motion for resentencing. The judge agreed. Six extra months. Plus an additional $1.1 million in restitution. Becuase of emails he thought were private conversations with family and friends.
This is not theoretical. This is documented. This happened.
Prosecutors didnt need a warrant. They didnt need to subpoena anything. Fumo had already consented when he agreed to use TRULINCS. His words - typed in frustration, in a prison where he had no other way to communicate - became the ammunition used against him.
Think about that. Really think about it. Your loved one has a bad day. Says something stupid in an email. Criticizes the judge. Complains about their lawyer. Makes a joke that sounds like a threat. Expresses frustration with their sentence. Every word stored. Forever. Searchable. Usable.
This isnt about major crimes. This is about human beings making human mistakes in the one communication channel available to them, and having those mistakes weaponized.
The scary part? You wont know its happening until its too late. The emails get stored silently. The prosecutors read them quietly. The resentencing motion arrives without warning. And suddenly words typed months ago in frustration become the central exhibit in a government filing. Your loved one wont even remember writing them. But the database remembers everything.
Federal prosecutors have access to sophisticated search tools. They can query the entire TRULINCS database for keywords, names, phrases. Looking for evidence of ongoing criminal activity? Search. Looking for statements that contradict trial testimony? Search. Looking for anything that might justify a sentence enhancement? Search. Your loved ones inbox is their evidence locker.
The October 2024 Blackout Nobody Reported
In October 2024, the Bureau of Prisons quietly changed a Corrlinks policy that affected thousands of inmates - and almost nobody covered it. The change? Group email limits went from 1,000 recipients to 10.
OK so why does that matter?
Organizations like Families Against Mandatory Minimums had been using Corrlinks to send legal updates to large groups of federal inmates. Information about First Step Act changes. Compassionate release opportunities. Sentence reduction possibilities. News that could actualy help people get out earlier.
Now those organizations can only reach ten inmates at a time. The BOP cited a 2020 Office of Inspector General audit about "radical emails" and terrorism concerns. But the effect isnt stopping terrorists. The effect is cutting off legal advocacy groups from reaching inmates with information about their rights.
Bloomberg Law called the new restrictions "overkill." Advocacy groups called it a silencing tactic. The BOP called it security. Meanwhile, inmates who might be eligible for sentence reductions dont even know to file the motions becuase nobody can tell them anymore.
Gets darker. The same system that restricts advocacy groups from sending legal information to inmates has no restrictions on prosecutors accessing every email in the database. Security for them. Surveillance for you.
Why Your Lawyer's Emails Aren't Protected
Heres something defense attorneys know that families dont. The attorney-client privilege that normaly protects legal communications? It evaporates the moment you use Corrlinks.
The federal government and CorrLinks work together to ensure users waive the attorney-client privilege on messages. Its not accidental. Its by design. The acknowledgment you clicked explicitly states that messages to and from attorneys "will not be treated as privileged communications."
In June 2014, Judge Dora Irizarry finally pushed back. In one case, she ruled that the government was "precluded from looking at any of the attorney-client e-mails, period." A clear rebuke. But that was one judge, one case, one decision. The system itself hasnt changed. The default is still waiver.
In February 2016, the American Bar Association passed a resolution urging the Department of Justice and BOP to ensure attorney-client communications remain confidential. The ABA. The largest association of lawyers in America. Basicly begging the federal government to protect a privilege thats supposed to be fundamental.
Nothing changed. The system is still running exactly as designed. Your lawyers emails to your incarcerated loved one? Readable. Searchable. Useable.
As Todd Spodek tells clients at Spodek Law Group, this creates impossible situations. You cant just tell someone not to email their lawyer from prison. Phone calls are expensive and monitored. Visits are restricted. Legal mail takes weeks. Email is the only practical option - and the only practical option forces you to surrender one of the most important rights in our legal system.
What Happens When You Say The Wrong Thing
Lets talk about consequences. Not hypothetical ones. Real ones. Documented ones.
If an inmate sends an email that staff deems "detrimental to the security, good order, or discipline of the institution," that email gets blocked. Maybe. Or maybe it goes through and the inmate recieves an incident report anyway. Code 297 or 397 violations. Email abuse.
An incident report means a disciplinary hearing. A disciplinary hearing means potential loss of good time. Loss of good time means more days served. More days served means families waiting longer. All becuase of an email.
But wait. It cascades. If your loved one loses email privleges, they lose contact with you. If they lose contact with you, the relationship deteriorates. If the relationship deteriorates, their mental health suffers. If mental health suffers, more incidents occur. More incident reports. More discipline. More time.
One email can start a cascade that adds months or years to a sentence.
And parole? The Parole Commission can reopen cases and rescind parole dates based on disciplinary violations. A finding from a prison disciplinary hearing officer can be treated as conclusive. Your loved ones frustrated email about the food? It could become the reason their parole gets denied.
Not exageration. Policy.
Heres what makes this particuarly cruel. The person reviewing the email - the correctional officer deciding if it should be blocked or trigger a report - has enormous discretion. Different officers interpret differently. What passes one day gets flagged the next. Sarcasm reads as a threat. Frustration reads as disrespect. Humor reads as contempt. And theres no algorithm, no standardized criteria. Just human judgment applied inconsistantly to every single message.
Your loved one learns to self-censor. To write carefully. To never express real feelings. The communication channel becomes a performance - sanitized, safe, empty. The relationship survives on surface exchanges while real emotions stay unexpressed becuase expressing them carries too much risk.
The Private Company Profiting From Your Pain
Advanced Technologies Group. ATG. Based in Iowa. You probly never heard of them. But they run the entire federal prison email system. They handle the MP3 player service too. A private corporation with exclusive contracts to monetize communication and entertainment for incarcerated people.
Theres no competition. No alternative provider. No market forces keeping prices fair. One company, one contract, one monopoly on human connection for over 150,000 federal inmates.
The pricing structure tells you everything. Five cents per minute for inmates who earn twelve cents per hour. Premium accounts for family members at eight dollars per year. Text message services at thirty-six dollars annually. Every feature costs money. Every communication generates revenue.
Some people defend this. They say private companies are more efficient. They say the government couldnt run the system as well. What they dont say is that efficiency in this context means extracting maximum revenue from people with no alternatives. Families desperate to stay connected. Inmates desperate to maintain relationships. Desperation monetized.
CorrLinks earned an estimated $40,000 in monthly app revenue alone - just from the mobile application. The full contract value with the Bureau of Prisons? That number isnt public. Private company. Private profits. Public prisoners.
What They Actually Dont Want You To Know
Everything on Corrlinks is plain text. No photos. No attachments. No hyperlinks. No formatting. Just words, limited to 13,000 characters per message. About 2,000 words. Less than this article.
You cant send a picture of your kids birthday party. You cant share a link to an article you thought theyd find interesting. You cant attach a PDF of legal documents. Plain text only. The reasoning is security - and maybe it is - but the effect is stripping away the richness of normal human communication. Just words on a screen. No voice. No images. No context beyond what you can type.
Maximum 30 approved contacts per inmate. Want to add someone new? Someone has to get removed. Friendships, family members, supporters - limited by a number someone decided was sufficient. Old friends from before prison? College roommates who want to reconnect? Extended family members who care? Someone has to get cut from the list.
Every message manually reviewed before delivery. Sometimes emails take hours. Sometimes days. Sometimes they never arrive and nobody tells you why. The reviewing officer decided something was problematic. Or didnt feel like approving it that day. Or flagged a word that seemed concerning.
Theres no appeal process for a blocked email that makes any practical difference. By the time you figure out what happened, by the time you complain, by the time anyone responds - days have passed. Communication interrupted. Connection damaged. Silence where there should have been words.
The Reality of Communication in Federal Prison
Heres the truth nobody writes in their helpful Corrlinks guides. The federal prison email system exists primarily as a surveillance and revenue tool. Communication is the byproduct that makes the surveillance possible.
You consent to monitoring becuase you have no choice. Your loved one pays becuase there is no alternative. A private company profits becuase they have no competition. Prosecutors access everything becuase you already waived your rights. And somewhere in all of this, you manage to exchange a few words with someone you love, knowing every character is being read, stored, and potentially weaponized.
Is it better than nothing? Probably. Before email, families had phone calls at thirty cents a minute and letters that took weeks. At least emails arrive faster. At least theres some connection.
But you should know what your signing up for. You should understand what "agree" actualy means. You should calculate the real cost - not in dollars, but in rights, in privacy, in vulnerability. Because the system you are using was not designed to help you communicate. It was designed to surveil, to profit, and to control. Communication just happens to be the mechanism that makes all three possible.
Sam Bankman-Fried uses Corrlinks from prison. So did Michael Cohen. So do countless other high-profile inmates. The same system. The same surveillance. The same terms. There is no premium version with privacy. There is no wealthy person's exception. Everyone in federal prison communicates through the same monitored, stored, searchable channel. Everyone's words become potentially useable evidence. No exceptions.
What This Means For Your Situation
If your loved one is facing federal charges or has already been sentenced, understanding Corrlinks is part of understanding their new reality. This isnt about scaring you away from using it. Isolation is worse than surveillance. Human connection matters.
But smart families make smart choices. They understand that nothing typed in a Corrlinks message is ever truly private. They know that frustrated venting can become prosecution evidence. They recognize that clicking "agree" means something real and permanent.
At Spodek Law Group, we help families navigate these realities. Not just the legal defense, but the practical aftermath. What to say, what not to say. How to maintain relationships without creating vulnerabilities. How to stay connected without building prosecution files.
The federal prison system is designed to be opaque. The rules are complicated. The consequences are severe. And the communication tools they provide are surveillance systems dressed up as conveniences. Knowing this matters. Understanding this protects you.
They have been monitoring every word. Your next move determines what they find. If you need help understanding how to protect your family during federal incarceration, call 212-300-5196. The window for smart decisions is smaller than you think.
