Mail and Photos at Iowa State Penitentiary: Code 1110

The Address Block, and the Code 1110

[Full Legal Name, Offender ID Number]
Iowa State Penitentiary - 1110
PO Box 96777
Las Vegas, NV 89193

1110 is this prison’s routing code. It tells the processing centre which of Iowa’s nine facilities a scanned letter belongs to.

The codes run in sequence, so a wrong digit routes your letter to a different working prison rather than failing loudly. Iowa Correctional Institution for Women is 1109 and Newton is 1111, one either side of this one. Check the number before you seal the envelope.

Iowa’s policy requires the person’s legal name on incoming mail, not a preferred one, along with the offender ID number.

The Fort Madison Box Is Not for Letters

This is the mistake unique to this prison, and it is an easy one.

Iowa publishes this facility’s address as 2111 330th Ave., PO Box 316, Fort Madison, IA 52627, street and PO Box together on the same line of the same block. Every instinct says the PO Box is where mail goes.

PO Box 316 is the money address. It is where restitution, court filing fees and child support payments go, for the whole state, because this prison administers those accounts. It is not a mail address, and non-legal mail sent there falls under the same rule as mail sent to the street address.

That rule is absolute in Iowa’s own wording: any non-legal mail sent directly to an Iowa Department of Corrections facility will be returned to sender.

What Happens to the Envelope You Post

Iowa’s correspondence policy, OP-MTV-01, names its mail vendor in its own text rather than describing an anonymous processor. The department contracts with Pigeonly Corrections as its approved mail vendor.

The sequence: your letter reaches the Nevada PO Box, Pigeonly Corrections opens all non-legal mail and scans it into a digital colour copy, and that 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.

Iowa’s timing rule is that letters are held no more than 24 hours and packages no more than 48 hours before distribution, with up to five days where a security review or translation is needed. That clock starts when the mail reaches the prison, not when it leaves your hands.

The Five Things Iowa Processes

• Letters, and the policy names children’s drawings specifically
• Greeting cards
• Postcards
• 4x6 photos, ten at most
• Unbound newsletters

Iowa counts mail from financial institutions, religious groups, educational institutions, periodicals, private businesses, health care facilities and third parties as non-legal, so all of it goes through the same Nevada box.

Mail from government agencies is a third category. Iowa treats it as non-legal but issues it through the confidential correspondence process instead.

Photos, Duplicates and Covered-Up Signs

Iowa caps attachments and enclosures at ten pages or pictures.

The content rules are specific. Female breasts, and the genitalia and buttocks of both sexes, must be substantially obscured or covered by clothing, including swimwear or undergarments, or by another object that is not itself obscene. Lewd display of genitalia, clothed or unclothed, is not allowed.

Duplicates are banned, in the policy’s own phrasing multiple copies of the same or like same photograph. So are gang signs, and Iowa closes the workaround by naming it: this includes photos that attempt to cover the hand gestures with emojis or similar.

Prints That Arrive as Prints

By post, as above: 4x6, ten at a time, scanned like everything else, so a colour copy arrives rather than your photograph.

Through Pigeonly, a real colour photograph arrives. You pick it from your phone and it reaches Fort Madison as a printed photo, not as a scan of one.

At a prison allowing one visit a week, what reaches the cell between visits carries more weight than it does elsewhere.

The Window for Getting It Returned

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, 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.

If something is refused, Iowa’s policy gives the sender a route its public pages omit: the sender is notified by mail or email of the rejection and the reason, and may protest the decision in writing to the warden within 10 days. Rejected mail is returned to sender with the postage charged to the incarcerated person.

Books, and Two Named Vendors

Iowa does not run a publisher-only rule. It runs a two-vendor rule.

A third party may buy books so long as they come directly from Books N Things or Edward R. Hamilton Books, and the sender is somebody the incarcerated person is allowed to correspond with. Money can also be placed on the account to buy publications from an approved vendor list, and books received directly from the Human Rights Defense Center are approved and cannot come from a third party.

Where a publication is refused on content, a three-person Publications Review Committee decides within 30 working days, and the incarcerated person has 10 days to say whether it should be destroyed, shipped out at his own cost, or appealed. An appeal goes by post to the Deputy Director of Institution Operations, Iowa Department of Corrections, 510 E. 12th Street, Des Moines, Iowa 50319, on form OP-MTV-02 F-2.

Removing the Nevada 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 Fort Madison.

That transit is where the time goes. A posted letter spends 3 to 5 business days reaching a Nevada PO Box before any processing begins, and the scanning, screening, printing and shipping back to Iowa all follow after that.

Sending from a free Pigeonly account takes the transit out, and the guesswork about PO Box 316 with it. Your letter, typed on a phone, gets printed and readied for code 1110 where the scanning happens, and no printer or stamps come into it.

At a prison that currently allows one visit a week, and where video runs on two weekday mornings most working families cannot make, letters carry more of the relationship than they do elsewhere in Iowa. Days matter.

The PO Box above is still correct and still works. This is the same destination without the days spent reaching it.

O-Mail, and Iowa’s Two Different Limits

Offender email runs through CorrLinks at $0.25 a message. Register at corrlinks.com.

Iowa’s family-facing page caps a message at 13,000 characters or 100 lines, about two pages, while two departmental policies say 14,000 instead. The contradiction is Iowa’s and it has not been resolved.

The department is blunt about privacy: by its nature O-mail is not confidential, and all incoming and outgoing messages may be inspected and read.

Left Unstated by Iowa

• A legal mail address for this facility. The return-to-sender rule covers non-legal mail specifically, and legal correspondence is handled separately, but Iowa publishes no facility-level address for it.
• How long a scan takes to reach somebody after it arrives in Nevada.
• Whether segregation status changes mail delivery, which matters at a maximum-security prison.
• Whether the person inside is told when something addressed to him is refused.

Worth Asking on 319-372-5432

1. Does segregation status change how quickly mail is delivered?
2. Where should legal mail for someone here be sent?
3. How long after arrival in Nevada does a scan reach him?
4. Is the ten-photo limit per envelope or per week?
5. I posted a letter to PO Box 316 by mistake. What happens to it?
6. Is he told when something addressed to him is rejected?