Iowa publishes a flat seven cents a minute to the lower 48, and says the money funds education and victim services rather than a profit share. Create your phone account in minutes.
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Iowa is one of the cheapest states in the country to take a call from, and it publishes the number rather than hiding it behind a vendor signup: seven cents a minute to anywhere in the lower 48. Calls come out only, and your number has to be on an approved list before anything connects. What Iowa does not publish is who runs the system, how long a call can last, or a flat statement about recording, and we would rather tell you that than guess.
Iowa publishes a flat seven cents per minute for all calls within the lower 48 states. A twenty-minute call costs $1.40.
The department is unusually direct about why. Its rate sheet says the costs of providing the service are reflected in the rates charged, “which are lower than for most other states,” and Iowa Code chapter 904.508A directs where the money goes: the Board of Corrections has assigned the fund to legal services, religious accommodations, education, and victim services.
Outside the lower 48, from the rate sheet effective May 1, 2026:
| Destination | Rate per minute |
|---|---|
| Lower 48 states | $0.07 |
| Alaska | $0.12 |
| Hawaii | $0.14 |
| Canada and Mexico | $0.12 |
| Puerto Rico | $0.12 |
| Vietnam | $0.15 |
| Honduras and the Philippines | $0.23 |
| Guatemala | $0.28 |
| El Salvador | $0.30 |
| United Kingdom | $0.66 |
International pricing is Iowa’s seven cents plus what the provider paid to place the call abroad.
Calls come out only. Nobody can ring in.
Before your phone will accept anything, the person inside has to add your number to their approved calling list. Iowa requires them to give the legal first and last name of whoever owns each number, and a number added without one may be restricted.
There is nothing you do at that stage. It happens from inside.
The person inside can move money from their own account. The minimum transfer is $1, and Iowa adds 7 percent on top, so $10 across costs them $10.70.
Or you can fund it from outside, by posting a money order with the printed Offender Telephone Service form. Here the 7 percent comes off instead: Iowa’s own example is that a $10 family deposit becomes a $9.35 credit.
Two things follow from that. Phone money is a separate balance from commissary, so funding one does not fund the other. And money moved onto the phone account cannot be moved back, though anything unused is credited back on release.
Phone deposits are lockboxed at Iowa State Penitentiary, not at Anamosa and not at Fort Dodge where commissary money goes.
Iowa’s telephone policy blocks a specific list, and knowing it saves a lot of confusion:
If you have moved your household to a toll-free line, or your number forwards elsewhere, that is why nothing gets through.
There are also people they cannot call at all: department staff, victims and victims’ households, minors where the offence involved a minor, anyone protected by a no-contact order, people currently under correctional supervision with some immediate-family exceptions, and anyone released from prison in the last six months.
Blocking is easy. Contact the institution and ask, or choose the blocking option when a call comes through.
Unblocking is deliberately harder. Iowa requires the request in writing, sent to the Iowa State Penitentiary Business Office, and it must come from the owner of the telephone number. Not from the person inside, and not by phone.
Worth knowing if a number was ever blocked in anger, or blocked by a previous holder of your number.
These work differently and better. An incoming legal call needs five days advance notice, runs Monday to Friday between 8:00 AM and 4:00 PM, and is scheduled in 25-minute intervals using a private phone room. Iowa’s policy states plainly that these calls are not monitored.
Outgoing calls to attorney numbers registered with the Iowa Supreme Court are also not monitored or recorded.
Iowa refuses refunds on this, and says so: the department does not issue refunds for any dropped, lost or disconnected calls placed to cellular devices. The same applies to VoIP and digital landlines.
If calls to your mobile keep cutting out, you are paying for the minutes either way.
Iowa runs offender email through CorrLinks, at $0.25 per message. Register at corrlinks.com.
The person inside funds their side the same way as phone credit, with 7 percent added, and the credits sit in their own separate account. Iowa’s family-facing page limits a message to 13,000 characters or 100 lines, roughly two pages, though two of its own policies say 14,000 characters instead. We are flagging the disagreement rather than picking one.
6 of 8 questions
Seven cents a minute to anywhere in the lower 48 states, so a twenty-minute call is $1.40. Alaska is 12 cents and Hawaii 14 cents. Iowa says its rates are lower than most states because the revenue is directed to legal services, religious accommodations, education and victim services rather than to a profit share.
Phone CallsEither your number is not on their approved calling list yet, or it is a type Iowa blocks. The blocked list includes toll-free numbers starting 800, 888, 877, 866, 855 and 844, 900 numbers, call forwarding, credit card calls and three-way calls. Adding a number is done from inside, and Iowa requires the legal name of whoever owns it.
Phone CallsPost a money order with the printed Offender Telephone Service form. Note that 7 percent sales tax comes off a family deposit, so Iowa's own example is that $10 becomes a $9.35 credit. Phone money is a separate balance from commissary, deposits are handled by Iowa State Penitentiary, and money moved onto the phone account cannot be moved back.
Phone CallsIowa never says. No page and no policy names a vendor, and the policy refers only to the contractor managing the offender phone system. We would rather tell you that than print a company name we cannot verify from an official Iowa source.
Phone CallsNot published. Iowa's telephone policy leaves the number of calls, their length and any limits to each institution, and Anamosa publishes none of it. Ask on 319-462-3504, because the answer changes what a seven-cent rate actually costs you over a month.
Phone CallsIowa does not state it outright, so neither will we. What the policy does say is that attorney calls are explicitly not monitored, and that institutional procedures cover security monitoring, which implies ordinary calls are. Treat anything said on a prison phone as potentially recorded while a case is open.
Phone CallsNo. Iowa states that it does not issue refunds for any dropped, lost or disconnected calls placed to cellular devices, and the same applies to VoIP and digital landline services. If it is happening often, a landline is the only route Iowa treats differently.
Phone CallsMessages through CorrLinks cost $0.25 each, which is less than a four-minute call. Register at corrlinks.com. Iowa's family page limits a message to 13,000 characters or about two pages, though two of its own policies say 14,000, a disagreement Iowa has not resolved.
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All information on this page comes directly from official government and facility sources. How we verify information › Last verified September 9, 2026.