North Central publishes no call length, no calling hours and no vendor, so seven cents a minute is the only rate Iowa confirms for this prison. Create your phone account in minutes.
Create your phone account in minutes
Iowa charges a flat seven cents a minute to the lower 48, among the cheapest published prison phone rates anywhere, and it prints an international card as well. Every call goes one way. The person inside places it, it connects only when your number is on an approved list carrying your legal name, and Iowa refuses several kinds of number outright. What North Central adds to the picture is silence: no call length, no calling hours, no frequency and no vendor are published for this prison, so more of the detail here has to come from a phone call than from a web page.
Iowa charges a flat seven cents per minute for all calls within the lower 48 states. Twenty minutes is $1.40.
The department explains the figure rather than leaving it bare. Its rate sheet says the costs of providing the service are reflected in rates “which are lower than for most other states”, and Iowa Code chapter 904.508A directs the revenue into a fund the Board of Corrections has assigned to legal services, religious accommodations, education and victim services.
Every call is placed by the person inside, and it connects only if your number is on their approved calling list. Iowa requires them to supply the legal first and last name of whoever owns each number, and a number added without one can be restricted.
There is no form for you to file and no account you can open that hurries it along. It happens from inside.
What you can do is check that the number they have is a number Iowa is willing to dial.
Forwarding is the quiet one and it wastes months. A landline that forwards to a mobile looks like a working number and will never take a call. In rural Iowa, where a household may keep a landline that pushes calls to a mobile out in the fields, this catches more families than it should.
Iowa also bars calls to particular people: department staff, victims and victims’ households, minors where the offence involved a minor, anyone under a no-contact order, people currently under correctional supervision with limited family exceptions, and anyone released from prison in the last six months.
Most states say international calls cost more and stop. Iowa publishes a card, from the rate sheet effective May 1, 2026:
| Destination | Per minute |
|---|---|
| Lower 48 states | $0.07 |
| Alaska | $0.12 |
| Hawaii | $0.14 |
| Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico | $0.12 |
| Vietnam | $0.15 |
| Honduras, Philippines | $0.23 |
| Guatemala | $0.28 |
| El Salvador | $0.30 |
| United Kingdom | $0.66 |
The mechanism is Iowa’s seven cents plus the average the provider paid to route the call abroad, which is why Vietnam costs eight cents more than a domestic call while a UK mobile costs far more than a UK landline.
North Central runs video on Monday, Tuesday and Friday, 8:30 AM to 3:30 PM, and it is the only Iowa prison offering a Tuesday slot.
Iowa charges nothing for video visits, which makes an hour of video cheaper than any call. The constraint is the hours: this schedule finishes at 3:30 PM on weekdays and offers nothing at a weekend, so it suits a family with daytime flexibility and not one working fixed shifts.
Booking goes through the Ameelio Connect app, and everyone aged 16 and over shows valid photo identification at the start.
North Central handles no phone money. Phone credit for every Iowa prison is lockboxed at Iowa State Penitentiary in Fort Madison, at the opposite corner of the state.
Funding from outside means posting a money order with the printed Offender Telephone Service form, and 7 percent sales tax comes off the top. Iowa’s worked example: a $10 family deposit becomes a $9.35 credit. When the person inside transfers his own money, 7 percent is added, so $10 costs him $10.70.
The minimum is $1, the transfer cannot be reversed, and unused phone money is credited back on release.
Commissary money is a separate envelope to a different town again, going to the IDOC Offender Fiduciary Account at Fort Dodge.
Blocking is easy. Contact the institution and ask, or take the option offered when a call comes through.
Unblocking is deliberately hard. Iowa requires a written request to the Iowa State Penitentiary Business Office, and it must come from the owner of the telephone number. Not from the person inside, not over the phone, and not through Rockwell City.
Include the number, your name as the account holder, your address, and the incarcerated person’s name and offender number so the office can match the request.
An incoming call from an attorney needs five days advance notice, runs Monday to Friday between 8:00 AM and 4:00 PM, and is scheduled in 25-minute intervals in a private phone room. Iowa’s policy states these calls are not monitored.
Outgoing calls to attorney numbers registered with the Iowa Supreme Court are likewise not monitored or recorded.
Iowa states it plainly: the department 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.
You pay for the minutes regardless. A genuine copper landline is the only thing treated differently, which is worth weighing in a part of Iowa where mobile coverage is patchy.
Iowa runs offender email through CorrLinks at $0.25 per message, less than four minutes of talking. Register at corrlinks.com.
The person inside funds his side the same way as phone credit, with 7 percent added. Iowa’s family-facing page caps a message at 13,000 characters or 100 lines, roughly two pages, while two departmental policies say 14,000. The contradiction is Iowa’s.
The department is direct about privacy: by its nature O-mail is not confidential, and all incoming and outgoing messages may be inspected and read.
6 of 8 questions
Seven cents a minute anywhere in the lower 48, so twenty minutes is $1.40. Alaska is 12 cents, Hawaii 14, and Canada, Mexico and Puerto Rico 12. Iowa also publishes an international card running from 15 cents for Vietnam to 66 cents for the United Kingdom.
Phone CallsNorth Central does not say, and neither does Iowa. The department delegates call length to each institution and this facility publishes nothing about it, along with nothing about calling hours or how many calls a week are allowed. Ring 712-297-7521 and ask rather than assuming another prison's limit applies.
Phone CallsNo. Every call in Iowa's system is placed by the person inside and no family member can call in. The number 712-297-7521 reaches staff for questions about visits, property and status, not the person you are trying to reach.
Phone CallsNo. Iowa blocks call forwarding outright, along with toll-free numbers on 800, 888, 877, 866, 855 and 844, 900 numbers, credit card calls and three-way calls. A forwarding landline looks like a working number and will never take a call, so give a number that rings where it is.
Phone CallsYes, because Iowa charges nothing for video visits. North Central runs video on Monday, Tuesday and Friday, 8:30 AM to 3:30 PM, and it is the only Iowa prison with a Tuesday slot. The catch is that the schedule is entirely on weekday daytimes, so it suits some families and not others.
Phone CallsTo Iowa State Penitentiary in Fort Madison, about 300 miles southeast, which holds the phone deposit lockbox for every Iowa prison. Post a money order with the printed Offender Telephone Service form. A family deposit has 7 percent sales tax deducted, so $10 becomes a $9.35 credit.
Phone CallsIn writing, and only from you. Iowa requires a written request to the Iowa State Penitentiary Business Office from the owner of the telephone number. The person inside cannot make the request, it cannot be done by phone, and it does not go through North Central.
Phone CallsNo. The department 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. A genuine copper landline is the only thing treated differently, which matters where mobile coverage is thin.
Phone CallsThe offender number every account here runs on.
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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.