Mail and Photos at Anamosa State Penitentiary: Code 1106

The Address, and the Code That Makes It Work

[Full Legal Name, Offender ID Number]
Anamosa State Penitentiary - 1106
PO Box 96777
Las Vegas, NV 89193

1106 is Anamosa’s code. Each Iowa prison has its own, and the code is what tells the processing centre which of the nine to send the scanned letter to. Iowa publishes the full set, and the numbers are close enough to each other that a slip matters: Clarinda is 1107, the Medical and Classification Center 1108, the women’s prison 1109, Iowa State Penitentiary 1110.

The name and offender ID number come from Iowa’s offender search.

What Iowa Says Happens to Mail Sent to the Prison

This is the sentence that makes Iowa different, and it is worth reading exactly as the department writes it: any non-legal mail sent directly to an IDOC facility will be returned to sender.

Not forwarded. Not delayed. Returned.

So 406 N High St. is the right address for a visit and the wrong address for a letter. It is the single most common way a letter to someone at Anamosa fails.

Who Handles It

Iowa’s correspondence policy names the contractor in its own text rather than describing an anonymous vendor: the department contracts with Pigeonly Corrections to receive mail from the public and produce copies for the people held at its facilities.

The process is: mail arrives at the Nevada PO Box, Pigeonly Corrections opens all non-legal mail and scans it into a digital colour copy, and the copy is printed and delivered to the correct Iowa prison. The original is held for 45 days rather than destroyed right away, and the sender can request it back in that window.

It runs at no additional cost to you.

The Accepted List, in Iowa’s Own Words

Iowa lists exactly what gets processed:

• Letters, and the department names children’s drawings specifically
• Greeting cards
• Postcards
• 4x6 photos, limited to ten
• Unbound newsletters

The ten-photo limit and the 4x6 size are both firm.

Getting the Original Back

The original is not destroyed right away. Pigeonly holds it for 45 days, and the sender can request it back for free any time before the last 7 days of that window, so the request needs to go in within the first 38 days.

The parcel goes back only to the address written on the envelope, and the request needs the recipient’s name, offender ID number and facility exactly as they appear on it. It is a one-time request, so a child’s drawing has to be requested on its own, the same as any other letter, and requested again for the next one.

If the 45 days pass without a request, the original is destroyed and what stays on file is the colour scan already delivered to the facility.

Cutting Out the Postal Leg

Iowa’s own policy names Pigeonly as the processor, which means a letter you post is travelling to us before it goes anywhere near Anamosa.

That leg is the slow part. A letter posted from Iowa to a Nevada PO Box spends 3 to 5 business days in transit before any processing starts, and the scanning, screening, printing and shipping back to Iowa all happen after that.

A free account at Pigeonly removes the transit entirely. You upload the letter or the photos from your phone, and it is printed and prepared from the processing side rather than posted to it. No printer, no stamps, and no waiting for the envelope to cross two states before the work begins.

The PO Box address above is still correct and still works. This is the same destination without the days spent getting there.

Photographs, and Iowa’s Approved Printer

There are two routes, and they give different results.

Through the mail, as above: 4x6, ten at a time, scanned like everything else, so what arrives is a printed copy.

Through a separate approved photo print service. Iowa names a separate vendor as its approved photo print provider for all its facilities, reached through its own app or website. Photos are screened by facility staff, then printed and shipped directly to the prison. Iowa’s wording on why that matters: incarcerated individuals receive actual photo products, not copies. It handles 4x6 and 5x7 photos, limited to ten, plus greeting cards and notes.

If the picture itself matters, that is the route that survives the process as a photograph.

Email, as a Faster Alternative

Iowa runs offender email through CorrLinks, at $0.25 a message. Register at corrlinks.com.

A message is capped at 13,000 characters or 100 lines, about two pages, on Iowa’s family-facing page. Two of the department’s own policies say 14,000 characters instead. The disagreement is Iowa’s, not ours.