Mail and Photos at Fort Dodge Correctional Facility: Code 1114

Three Addresses, One Prison

Worth laying out before anything else, because this is where letters go wrong at Fort Dodge.

What you are sending	Where it goes
A letter, card or photo	PO Box 96777, Las Vegas, NV 89193, with code 1114
Money	IDOC Offender Fiduciary Account, 1550 L Street, Suite B, Fort Dodge, IA 50501
A visitor application	Mount Pleasant Correctional Facility, Attn: Central Records

The prison’s own street address, 1550 L St., is on that list once, as the money lockbox, and it takes no letters at all.

The Mail Address, Exactly

[Full Legal Name, Offender ID Number]
Fort Dodge Correctional Facility - 1114
PO Box 96777
Las Vegas, NV 89193

1114 is Fort Dodge’s code. Every Iowa prison has one, and it is what tells the processing centre which of the nine a scanned letter belongs to. The codes sit close together, which is why a transposed digit matters: Newton is 1111, North Central 1112, Mount Pleasant 1113, Fort Dodge 1114.

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

What Iowa Does With a Letter Sent to the Prison

The department’s wording leaves nothing open: any non-legal mail sent directly to an IDOC facility will be returned to sender.

Returned, not forwarded and not held. At Fort Dodge this bites harder than elsewhere, because 1550 L Street is a real working address for money, so a letter sent there looks like it should arrive and does not.

The Contractor, Named in Policy

Iowa’s correspondence policy names the vendor in its own text rather than describing an anonymous processor: the department contracts with Pigeonly Corrections as its approved mail vendor.

The sequence is: your letter reaches 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 right Iowa prison. The paper original is held for 45 days rather than destroyed right away, and the sender can request it back in that window.

There is no additional cost to you for any of that.

What Iowa Accepts

The department’s own list:

• Letters, and it names children’s drawings specifically
• Greeting cards
• Postcards
• 4x6 photos, ten maximum
• Unbound newsletters

Both the size and the count on photos are firm.

Getting Your 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, not anywhere else, and the request needs the recipient’s name, ID number and facility exactly as they appear on the parcel. It is a one-time request: nothing is returned automatically going forward, so file a new request for the next letter too if you want it back.

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.

Getting a Letter There Without the Postal Leg

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

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

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 nothing sitting in a mail sack crossing two states.

The PO Box above is still correct and still works. This is the same destination, minus the days spent getting there.

Two Ways to Send a Photograph

They produce different things, and the difference matters more than the price.

By post, as above: 4x6, ten at a time, scanned like everything else, so what arrives is a printed copy of your photo.

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 own reason for naming it: incarcerated individuals receive actual photo products, not copies. It handles 4x6 and 5x7 photos, limited to ten, plus greeting cards and notes.

If the photograph itself is the point, that is the route that arrives as one.

Email, and Its Character Limit

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

Iowa’s family page caps a message at 13,000 characters or 100 lines, about two pages. Two of the department’s own policies say 14,000 instead. We are flagging the disagreement rather than choosing.