Sending Mail and Photos to Chautauqua County Jail

Box One: Personal Letters and Photographs

For a letter, a card, a photograph or a child’s drawing:

Chautauqua County Jail, NY
John Smith, #11111
PO BOX 807
Syracuse, NY 13201

The first line is the complete facility name and the state, with no abbreviations, because that box handles mail for several New York jails and the name is what routes it. The second line is their full name and booking number.

The county’s own notice also asks for your full name and physical address as the sender, and limits what may go in to personal mail only, meaning letters, pictures and drawings.

Box Two: Anything From a Lawyer

Privileged correspondence does not go to Syracuse. The county publishes a separate instruction for it:

Inmate Name and their MFN#
PO BOX 190
Mayville, NY 14757

Note the number changes. Personal mail uses the booking number, privileged mail uses the MFN number, which is the jail’s own identifier.

This split exists for a reason worth understanding. The Syracuse box is a scanning operation run by a contractor. Legal correspondence is not supposed to be opened and imaged by anyone outside the jail, so it stays within the county.

What Happens to a Personal Letter

Once it reaches Syracuse it is scanned and delivered as a colour image to your person through their tablet, under a free profile. They read it on a screen rather than holding the paper.

Two practical consequences. If you wanted to send a drawing for them to keep, what arrives is a picture of it. And legibility matters more than usual, because a scan only reproduces what was clear to begin with.

Only Two Things May Be Written on the Envelope

The Sheriff’s Office is unusually blunt about this:

Your name and address as well as the inmate name and jail address is the only writing allowed on the outside of the envelope.

So no decoration, no messages up the side, no stickers and no drawing on the flap. Anything beyond the two addresses risks the envelope.

What Must Not Go to Syracuse

Cheques and money orders and attorney-client privileged mail are excluded from the personal mail box. Those follow the facility’s own guidelines instead.

A money order posted into a scanning operation does not reach a commissary account. Money at this jail runs through SmartDeposit, and legal mail goes to Mayville.

Clothing and Property Sent In

The county publishes a list of what may be received, and the colour rules are strict.

• Up to 7 pairs of underwear, white only, no logos
• Up to 7 T-shirts, white only, no logos and no pockets
• Up to 7 pairs of socks, white only, no logos
• Up to 7 sports bras, white only, no logos and no underwire
• Up to 2 thermal shirts, white only, no logos and no pockets
• Up to 2 pairs of thermal bottoms, white only
• 1 religious medal or article, a one inch medallion

Anything outside that list is inventoried, sealed and placed in your person’s property, and they are told what came. So it is not thrown away, but they will not get it until release.

Photographs

The mail notice names pictures and drawings as acceptable personal mail. They reach your person the same way a letter does, as a colour scan on the tablet.

Sending From Home

The two-box split is the part that costs families letters, and it is easy to get wrong at the post office counter. Pigeonly prints and posts letters and photos to the Syracuse box in the format the scanner expects, with the facility name and booking number already in place.