Tarrant County sends personal letters, legal mail, and books to three different addresses, and personal mail arriving at the jail itself is returned to sender. Send letters and photos in minutes.
Send letters and photos in minutes
Mail for someone at Lon Evans Corrections Center does not all go to one place. Tarrant County divides it three ways, and the split is the thing that trips families up more than any rule about content. Personal letters go to an out-of-state company that scans them and delivers the images to a tablet. Legal mail, books, and money orders go to a Tarrant County address on North Lamar. Personal mail sent to that North Lamar address is stamped return to sender. Getting the destination right matters more than getting the wording right.
| What you are sending | Where it goes |
|---|---|
| Personal letters, cards, photos | An out-of-state scanning processor |
| Legal mail | 100 North Lamar Street, Fort Worth, TX 76196 |
| Books and magazines from a publisher | 100 North Lamar Street, Fort Worth, TX 76196 |
| Money orders | 100 North Lamar Street, Fort Worth, TX 76196 |
Note that none of these is the Lon Evans street address at 600 W. Weatherford. Mail is handled centrally for the Tarrant County jail system, so the building your person is in does not change where you send things.
Tarrant County publishes the scanning address for personal mail only inside an image file on its correspondence page. The address does not appear as text anywhere on the site, which means it is invisible to a search engine and easy to miss entirely.
There is a second problem. The county’s own graphic pairs a PO Box number with a ZIP+4 that does not match it. A PO Box ZIP+4 normally encodes the box number itself, so those two figures disagree, and we are not prepared to publish an address we know contains an internal contradiction. The scanning company publishes no facility directory of its own, and its help pages say the address is revealed only after you create an account and connect to the person.
So this is one thing worth a phone call to 817-884-3000 before the first letter. Ask for the personal mail address, read the box number and ZIP back, and write it down. Every letter after that is straightforward.
Mail is opened and scanned by the processor, approved or denied by mailroom staff, and then viewable on the person’s tablet. The paper original does not reach them.
That changes what is worth sending. A child’s drawing arrives as an image on a screen rather than something that can be kept, and the same is true of photographs. It is worth knowing before you send something irreplaceable.
Photos are capped at 10 or fewer per envelope, unframed, and no larger than 4x6 inches. Photographs are the only item permitted inside personal correspondence.
Letters themselves must be no larger than 12 by 16 inches.
Content rules bar violent, gruesome, or obscene imagery, anything illegal under the Texas Penal Code, depictions of explosives, weapons, or drug manufacture, material promoting strikes, riots, or escapes, and material encouraging deviant sexual behaviour. Mail labelled as legal that turns out to contain non-legal material is refused.
Books must be new, soft-backed, and shipped directly from an established publisher, by UPS or USPS only.
Amazon is explicitly excluded, and the county gives its reason: Amazon uses third-party couriers. Distributors such as Barnes & Noble are no longer accepted either. Magazines and crossword books have to arrive as a publisher subscription.
The county names acceptable publishers, which is unusually specific and worth using: Penguin Random House, Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, Macmillan, Bloomsbury, SureShot, Tyndale, Penny Publications, and Scholastic.
Newspapers and magazines hand-delivered to the jail are refused.
Tarrant County endorses MailGuard Tracker at mailguardtracker.com, which is free to sign up for. It shows delivery status, sends rejection notifications, and gives you copies of processed mail. If a letter has gone missing, that is the first place to look.
One limit worth knowing: the jail is responsible only for mail delivered by the postal service. A tracer on lost mail goes to the post office rather than to the jail.
Alongside the official postal route, Pigeonly lets you send letters and photos from your phone. You upload what you want to send and it is printed and mailed to the facility according to that jail’s mail rules, so there is no printer, envelope, or stamp needed at your end.
It goes through the same official channel rather than around it, and the mail is still scanned and reviewed the same way. What it removes is the formatting and postage work, and the risk of getting the photo size or count wrong.
6 of 8 questions
It depends on what you are sending. Legal mail, books from publishers, and money orders go to 100 North Lamar Street, Fort Worth, TX 76196. Personal letters go somewhere else entirely, to an out-of-state company that scans them. Personal mail sent to the North Lamar address is returned to sender, and neither address is the Lon Evans building at 600 W. Weatherford.
MailBecause the version Tarrant County publishes contradicts itself. The address appears only inside an image on the county's correspondence page, never as text, and the PO Box number it gives does not match the ZIP+4 printed beside it. A PO Box ZIP+4 normally encodes the box number, so one of the two is wrong. The scanning company publishes no facility directory either. Call 817-884-3000, ask for the personal mail address, and read the box number and ZIP back to confirm.
MailNo. Personal mail is opened and scanned by an outside processor, reviewed by mailroom staff, and delivered to the person's tablet as images. The paper never reaches them. That is worth thinking about before sending an original photograph or a child's drawing.
MailTen or fewer per envelope, unframed, and no larger than 4x6 inches. Photos are the only item allowed inside personal correspondence. They are scanned like everything else, so the person sees them on a tablet rather than holding them.
MailNo. Tarrant County excludes Amazon specifically, because it ships using third-party couriers. Books have to be new, soft-backed, and sent direct from an established publisher by UPS or USPS. Distributors such as Barnes & Noble are no longer accepted. The county names Penguin Random House, Harper Collins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, Macmillan, Bloomsbury, SureShot, Tyndale, Penny Publications, and Scholastic as acceptable.
MailMailGuard Tracker at mailguardtracker.com is free and endorsed by the county. It shows delivery status, notifies you if something is rejected, and lets you see copies of processed mail. If a letter is genuinely lost in transit, the tracer goes to the post office, since the jail is only responsible for mail the postal service has delivered to it.
MailAnything with contraband is returned to sender. Also refused: material illegal under the Texas Penal Code, violent, gruesome, or obscene imagery, depictions of explosives, weapons, or drug manufacture, material promoting strikes, riots, or escapes, and material encouraging deviant sexual behaviour. Mail labelled legal that contains non-legal material is rejected, and so are newspapers or magazines hand-delivered to the jail.
MailUse the person's full legal name and their CID number, the Tarrant County inmate ID that comes from the inmate search. Spell the name exactly as the search shows it, since that is what the mailroom matches against.
MailOne search covers all five jails, and will not say which one someone is in.
View ArticleA-L and M-Z visit on different days. The 150-mile rule and the six-month bar.
View ArticleFive deposit methods through Access Corrections. No cash by mail since 2018.
View ArticleSmart Communications holds the contract. Free calls happen only at booking.
View ArticleSearch for your loved one and start sending photos, letters, and messages today.
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All information on this page comes directly from official government and facility sources. How we verify information › Last verified September 7, 2026.