Mail and Photos at Mohawk Correctional Facility

How to Address It

John Smith, 12A3456
Mohawk Correctional Facility
P.O. Box 8451
Rome, NY 13442

Name and DIN together on the first line. The DIN is the Department Identification Number the state lookup returns, and mail without one cannot be sorted to a person.

8451, and the One That Is Not Theirs

Here is how the state publishes the address for this prison.

6514 Rt. 26 P.O. Box 8450 (Incarcerated Individual Mail: P.O. Box 8451) Rome, NY 13442

Two boxes, one line, and a single digit between them.

P.O. Box 8450 is the prison’s own box, where its business post goes. P.O. Box 8451 is the one that reaches a person in custody.

Every New York state prison publishes this pair, but nowhere else in the programme are the two numbers consecutive. At Marcy the gap is 5000 against 3600; at Five Points it is 400 against 119. Here it is one. That makes a slip of the pen, a mistyped digit or a half-remembered number far likelier to land in the wrong place, and far harder to spot afterwards.

Write 8451 and check it twice.

What the Envelope Needs

• Full name and DIN on the first line
• P.O. Box 8451, then Rome, NY 13442
• Your full return address, in the top left corner
• Nothing else written on the outside

A letter with no return address is treated as contraband and is not delivered. That is the department’s own wording and it holds statewide.

The Paper Arrives

Mail at Mohawk is opened and inspected at the prison and then handed over. Your envelope, your handwriting, your paper.

Many New York county jails now route personal mail to a scanning centre and deliver it as an image on a tablet. State prisons do not. If the last place you wrote to was a county jail, this is a different experience at the receiving end.

What the Mailroom Refuses

Published by the department and applying statewide.

Refused	Note
Polaroid photographs	The format itself, whatever the picture shows
Nude photographs
Postage stamps	Do not enclose stamps for a reply
Letters from other people	Third-party mail, with an exception for children
Tape, glue or paste	Including on newspaper clippings
Cash, checks, money orders	Covered below

There is also a paper limit: five pages of printed or photocopied material per letter, with newspaper clippings counting one page each. Legal papers for an active case can exceed it only with the Superintendent’s written permission, obtained in advance, and no more than once every four months.

Photographs

Ordinary printed photographs get through and they are the best thing you can put in an envelope.

Polaroids do not, anywhere in New York, because of the format and not the picture. An instant print has a thick backing that can conceal things, so the category is excluded.

Order prints from a photo service or print them at home on ordinary photo paper, and keep writing on the back to a name and a date.

Money Goes to Miami

Nothing financial goes in the envelope. The inspection is looking for exactly that.

Deposits go to the JPay lockbox, PO Box 531190, Miami, Florida 33153, with a JPay deposit slip, capped at $999.99 per money order and free by post. On a visit day the lockbox inside Mohawk takes $50 in cash a day in total.

Packages Come From Vendors

Families cannot post or carry packages in. Everything arrives directly from an approved vendor by USPS, FedEx or UPS.

The allowance is two non-food packages a year and three food packages a month, food capped at a combined 40 pounds. The department publishes a disapproved vendor list and Directive #4911 carries the detail.

Legal Mail Runs Separately

Mail from a lawyer or a court is privileged under Directive #4421, and it is opened in front of the person it is addressed to, not in the mailroom.

A family member cannot send ordinary mail under a legal label. Trying it puts the letter at risk instead of speeding it up.

On the Weekends That Are Not Yours

Mohawk alternates its visiting weekends by DIN, so roughly half of them belong to the other group, and no free bus runs to Oneida County. The post covers the gap.

Pigeonly prints and sends letters and photos to Mohawk with P.O. Box 8451 and the DIN already in place, so the one digit that separates this prison’s two boxes is handled before the envelope goes out.