Mail and Photos at Auburn Correctional Facility

Two ZIP Codes, One Prison

[Full Legal Name, DIN]
Auburn Correctional Facility
P.O. Box 618
Auburn, NY 13021

Address	ZIP	What it is for
P.O. Box 618	13021	Mail to an incarcerated person
135 State Street	13024	The street address, where you drive for a visit

The ZIP difference is the part that catches people. Both are Auburn, New York, both are the same prison, and an envelope written from memory with the street ZIP on a box address is an envelope that goes astray.

Use Box 618 and 13021 together. They travel as a pair.

The other state prison in this county, Cayuga Correctional Facility in Moravia, takes family mail at P.O. Box 1186, Moravia, NY 13118. Nothing about that address applies to Auburn. Its details are in our Cayuga mail guide.

The DIN matters as much as the name. Directive 4422 has staff check before opening anything that the addressee can be identified and is currently at the facility. At a prison handling intake, detention and transit, that check matters more than at a settled placement.

Your return address goes in the top left corner, as a requirement rather than a courtesy.

Confirm They Have Not Moved On

Auburn takes intake from ten counties, serves as a detention centre, and holds one of only two transit units New York names.

A lot of the people here are at the beginning of something. Somebody received at Auburn after sentencing in Syracuse may be somewhere else entirely once classification finishes, and nothing notifies a family when that happens.

Check the lookup before you post, particularly in the first months.

What the Prison Does With Your Letter

Incoming mail is opened and inspected at Auburn by Auburn staff, looking for cash, checks, money orders, printed material over the limit and contraband.

That inspection is the whole process. Nothing is scanned, photocopied or digitised, and no third-party vendor handles it. In a growing number of states a posted letter is opened by a contractor elsewhere and delivered as an image on a tablet. New York has not done that.

So a card is a card and a drawing is a drawing when it arrives, which changes what is worth sending.

The Refusal List at Box 618

Item	Why
Polaroids and instant photographs	Prohibited outright
Postage stamps	Cannot be received from outside
Cash, checks, money orders	Returned to sender with a deposit slip
A letter written by someone else and enclosed	Third-party mail, with an exception for children
More than five pages of printed or photocopied material	Over the limit
Nude or sexually explicit photographs	Prohibited

The five-page cap surprises most people. Printouts, articles, court documents, anything photocopied: five pages. Longer documents need another route, and books and magazines have to come from an approved vendor.

Stamps deserve a second look, especially for somebody newly arrived. You cannot post them in, so the person has to buy their own from commissary before they can write back, and a newly received person may have nothing in their account yet. If you have not heard from them, that is often why.

Photographs, and What Arrives

Allowed, and they arrive as photographs rather than as scans.

No Polaroids or instant film, nothing nude or sexually explicit. New York publishes no numeric limit for Auburn, so send a reasonable number rather than a stack in one envelope.

Posting Without an Envelope

Through Pigeonly you can write or upload photographs from your phone, and they are printed and posted to the facility under Auburn’s own rules. No envelope, no printer, no stamp.

Two things make that useful specifically here. The first is the address: two ZIP codes for one prison is exactly the kind of detail that goes wrong when you are writing from memory weeks after somebody told you it once.

The second is the stamp rule. New York will not let you enclose one, and someone just received at intake may have no commissary balance to buy their own. A letter that does not depend on you owning a stamp book, or on them having money yet, is worth something in those first weeks.

Vendor Packages, and Unsettled Placements

You cannot post a package to Auburn. New York permits approved vendors only, shipping by USPS, FedEx or UPS. Nothing can be brought to a visit either.

Statewide limits: three food packages a month, no more than 40 pounds combined, and two non-food packages a year.

DOCCS publishes a disapproved vendor list rather than an approved one, which is the reverse of what most people expect. Check yours is not on it.

Auburn carries a Special Housing Unit and a Residential Rehabilitation Unit, and Directive 4911 excludes some unit types from packages entirely. Confirm the unit before ordering, particularly for somebody whose placement is not settled.

Mail From an Attorney or a Court

Correspondence from an attorney or a court is opened in the person’s presence rather than out of it, but only if the envelope shows it is legal mail and identifies the sender as someone entitled to send it.

An unmarked envelope from a law office is treated as ordinary mail and inspected like anything else.

Mail Details Auburn Omits

• A numeric limit on photographs per envelope.
• A package room address for this facility.
• How long mail takes from arrival to delivery.
• Any facility-specific mail rule. Everything above is New York’s statewide policy applied here.

Five Checks Before the Envelope Goes

1. Confirm in the lookup that they are still at Auburn and not moved on from intake.
2. Use P.O. Box 618 with ZIP 13021, not the State Street ZIP.
3. Full name and DIN on the envelope, your return address top left.
4. Count printed pages and stop at five.
5. Keep cash, money orders and stamps out of the envelope.