Mail & Photos to the Crain Unit. Why Letters Go to Dallas

The Mailing Address for Letters and Photos

Texas Department of Criminal Justice
[Full First and Last Name] [TDCJ Number]
PO Box 660400
Dallas, TX 75266-0400

Use her full commitment name, the one on her judgment, not a nickname. Mail without the full name and 8-digit TDCJ number is refused and returned.

The Thing Families Ask About Most: Property

You cannot mail her personal property. This is the question that comes up constantly with a women’s unit, and the answer is the same for everything: clothing, shoes, toiletries, appliances.

TDCJ’s Offender Orientation Handbook allows a woman to have up to seven white bras without underwire, and permits a curling iron and a hair dryer with registration papers. Both are real entitlements. Neither can arrive in a parcel from you. They come through the commissary or through the approved package system, which means the practical way to help is to put money in her trust fund account rather than to post a box.

Our send money guide covers that, including one Crain-specific catch: women in G4 custody cannot receive eCommDirect package purchases at all.

What Still Goes to Gatesville

The unit’s own address handles legal mail, special mail, correspondence from a media outlet, business correspondence from an organization or agency, packages, publisher-direct books and magazines, and government benefit checks.

Christina Melton Crain Unit
1401 State School Road
Gatesville, TX 76599-2999

Anything needing her signature goes to the same address, addressed care of the Law Library.

One caution on the ZIP: TDCJ’s unit page and handbook give 76599-2999, while its directory table gives 76528. We use the unit page’s version, and a call to (254) 865-8431 will settle it if something comes back.

Check the Gatesville Unit Before You Post

Six TDCJ units sit in Gatesville, five of them for women. Crain is at 1401 State School Road and Hilltop is at 1500 State School Road. Murray, Woodman and O’Daniel are close by, and O’Daniel is still called Mountain View by its own unit code.

Letters go to the Dallas box keyed to her TDCJ number, so those are safe from the mixup. It is books, packages and legal mail, the things addressed to the unit itself, where naming the wrong Gatesville prison actually costs you.

What Happens to the Paper You Send

Mail is opened and scanned in Dallas, then delivered digitally, usually within about three business days. The physical original is destroyed after 90 days.

If you want the original back, particularly a child’s drawing or a photograph you cannot replace, enclose a stamped self-addressed envelope. That is the only way to have it returned.

There is no limit on how much you send and TDCJ charges nothing to scan it.

Books and Magazines

Under a rule effective April 1, 2026, books must be softback and in new condition. Hardbacks and used books are refused. They must ship directly from a publisher, a bookstore or an online bookseller, never from an individual, and they go to the unit address rather than to Dallas.

Photos, and Another Way to Send Them

Photographs take the same route as letters, to the Dallas PO Box, and go through the same scanning process.

You can also send letters and photos through Pigeonly. You upload a letter or photos from your phone and they are printed and mailed to the facility according to that prison’s mail rules, with no printer, envelope or stamp needed. It is an alternative to the post office rather than a replacement for the official address above, and mail sent that way still goes through the same Dallas center.