Send Money to Erie County Correctional Facility

The Missing Route, and Why It Matters Here

Erie County publishes a cashier’s window on the first floor of the Holding Center, near the Delaware Avenue entrance, open seven days a week. It publishes no equivalent at Alden.

That difference bites in a specific situation, and it is a common one. Somebody is arrested, held in Buffalo, and family pay cash at the window there. Then they are transferred out to Alden. The window route stops working, and nobody tells you, because a transfer shows up only as a changed code on the roster.

So at Alden, plan on the kiosk, a card, or the post.

The Four Routes That Do Work

Route	Cost	Takes cash
Facility kiosk	As low as $5.00	Yes
Online, accesscorrections.com	As low as $6.00	No
Phone, 866-345-1884	As low as $6.00	No
Money order to the lockbox	Free	Money order

“As low as” is Erie’s own wording, so read those as floors. The exact fee appears at checkout once you have chosen the facility.

The kiosk is the only route at Alden that takes physical cash, and it is at the facility, so it means a drive either way.

The Free Route, Posted to Missouri

Nothing about this address is local, and that surprises people:

Secure Deposits - Erie County
P.O. Box 12486
St. Louis, MO 63132

Make the money order payable to ACCESS SECURE DEPOSITS. Not to the jail, not to the Sheriff, not to the person.

The deposit slip must go in with it. Erie states the slip is required to process the funds and avoid delay. It asks for the ICN number and the person’s name, and marks the sender’s name and address as required, along with city, state, ZIP, an email address, a phone number, the sender’s date of birth and the amount. A digital receipt goes to the email you supply.

House rules on the envelope:

• No cash.
• Do not staple, clip or tape the money order to the slip.
• US funds only. Where the recipient cannot be identified, the money goes back to the sender.
• Black or blue ink, typed or written.

The slip is published in English and Spanish.

The Rule That Destroys Things

Erie is blunt about what happens if you treat a deposit envelope as a letter:

Do not include any letters, stamps, photos or notes with your deposit. They will be discarded.

Not returned. Not held. Discarded. Photographs are the painful case, because they are often the only copy. Anything you want read goes in its own envelope to Walden Avenue under the rules on the mail guide.

The Daily Ceiling

$2,900 per day across the routes. It is a daily cap rather than a per-transaction one, and Erie publishes no separate monthly limit.

Who Answers 866-345-1884

That number is Access Corrections, covering telephone deposits and customer service, and the company behind it is Keefe Commissary Network in St. Louis, Missouri.

They can help with a failed card payment or a missing receipt. They cannot tell you whether somebody is in custody, when visiting runs, or whether a package arrived. Alden’s own line is 716-937-9101.

Commissary, Packages and What Money Buys

A deposit is a credit the person spends on commissary themselves. A care package is a different transaction: you buy from Erie’s package vendor, which redirects to the Access Corrections catalogue, and the county’s quantity limits apply. Those limits sit on the mail and photos guide, because Erie treats packages as a mail question.

Erie does not publish whether phone credit is funded separately from commissary, what happens to a balance on release, or how a balance follows somebody transferred between its two jails. For those, the Alden line is the place to ask.