Phone Calls at Upstate Correctional Facility

There Is Nothing to Set Up

The shortest section on this guide: you do not have to do anything.

No account, no card to register, no balance to top up, no per minute rate. New York stopped charging families for state prison calls on 1 August 2025, and Upstate is covered by that.

Anyone telling you to open an account to receive calls from Malone is working from the rules that applied before then.

The Weekly Allowance

Free calls	Three per week
Length	Up to fifteen minutes each
Credited	Every Saturday
After the three	Calls run up to thirty minutes
Window	7:00 AM to 11:00 PM

The three reset weekly and do not carry over, so an unused week is gone.

The Call Comes Out

You cannot ring in. There is no number at Upstate that connects to a person in custody, and no way to leave a message for one.

What that means in practice is keeping your phone reachable between 7:00 AM and 11:00 PM. With three calls in a week, a missed one is a quarter of the month’s contact.

Fifteen Numbers, Their List

Each person keeps an approved list of up to fifteen numbers, and they manage it. A family member cannot ask for a number to be added from outside.

So a changed mobile number has to reach them by letter or on a call before it can be dialled. A number nobody inside knows about is a number that does not work, however often you look at the phone.

Special Housing and the Phone

Upstate holds people in special housing, and phone access there is restricted and decided case by case under the housing rules, not the general allowance above.

If someone moves into special housing, do not assume the three weekly calls continue. Letters are unaffected, which matters during exactly the stretch when calls may stop.

Recorded, With One Exception

Calls from New York state prisons are recorded and may be monitored, with a notice at the start of each call.

Properly arranged legal calls are the exception and are not monitored. Ordinary family calls are, so speak on the basis that somebody may listen to it later.

Calls, the Coach, and the Post

Upstate is better served than most northern prisons, because a free visitor bus runs here and calls are free. Even so, three calls a week is forty five minutes, and a coach trip is a handful of days a year.

A call ends and leaves nothing behind. A letter gets read twice and a photograph goes on a wall. Pigeonly sends both to Upstate from your phone, addressed to P.O. Box 2000 with the DIN in place, so the weeks with no call and no coach still carry something.