FCI Forrest City Low (BOP): Visits, Mail, Money & CorrLinks Guide
FCI Forrest City Low is a low-security federal men's prison at 1400 Dale Bumpers Road in Forrest City, St. Francis County, Arkansas, operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). It is part of a paired BOP complex that also includes FCI Forrest City Medium next door (which holds medium-security men) and an adjacent Federal Prison Camp (FPC) for minimum-security men. Together the Forrest City complex holds several thousand federally sentenced men serving time for federal offenses ranging from drug trafficking to white-collar and immigration cases. Low-security BOP institutions like FCI Forrest City Low have double-fenced perimeters, dormitory-style housing, work assignments through UNICOR and other programs, and structured education and reentry programming. For families with a loved one at Forrest City Low, this guide covers the weekend visiting schedule with its alphabetical rotation, the BOP's approved-visitor list process, CorrLinks email, ViaPath/BOP phone service, and how to send money through the National Lockbox in Des Moines, Iowa.
About FCI Forrest City Low and the BOP low-security level
FCI Forrest City Low is one of the newer facilities in the BOP's eastern Arkansas complex, and the Low and adjacent Medium share infrastructure but operate under different security standards. Low-security BOP institutions are the second-lowest security level (above minimum-security camps but below medium and high) and typically hold men serving mid-range federal sentences. Housing at a Low is generally dormitory-style rather than celled; the perimeter is double-fenced with electronic detection but without gun towers; and inmates have significant program participation obligations including work assignments through UNICOR (Federal Prison Industries) or other operational assignments, education, and reentry programming.
Every person in BOP custody has a unique 8-digit federal register number that follows them across the entire system. That register number, along with the full legal name used at conviction, is required on every letter, deposit, visit registration, and CorrLinks message. The BOP Inmate Locator is the authoritative source for whether someone is currently at FCI Forrest City Low or has been transferred, and it is worth checking before any long trip. Our guide on how to find someone in jail or prison covers the search process more generally.
Visiting FCI Forrest City Low: weekend hours and the points system
Families and friends may visit inmates at FCI Forrest City Low on Saturdays and Sundays from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m., plus federal holidays. Because weekends are heavily used, the facility may limit visits to either Saturday or Sunday based on the last name of the inmate — an alphabetical rotation that spreads visitor volume across both days. Confirm your loved one's assigned day before traveling by calling (870) 630-6000 or asking him directly.
Each inmate is assigned five visitation points per month, and one point is deducted per visit — effectively capping regular visitors at about five visits per month before points reset. Visits cannot exceed two hours if the visiting room is busy, though they can run longer on slower days. All visitors must be on the inmate's pre-approved visitor list, which is set up through Form BP-A0629 (Visitor Information Form): the inmate requests the form, mails it to you, and you return the completed form to the facility for a background check that typically takes two to four weeks. Approval is not automatic — the BOP screens visitors, and past felony convictions in particular can be a barrier.
Bring a valid government-issued photo ID and dress within BOP visiting-room rules (no khaki that resembles inmate uniform, no denim on certain days, no revealing clothing, no open-toed shoes for adults). Visitors can bring only a small amount of cash for vending machines and must leave phones and most personal items in the car. The Warden may restrict or cancel visits for safety and security reasons, so always call ahead the morning of a planned visit to confirm normal operations.
How to send money to a Forrest City Low inmate: BOP National Lockbox
Money for a BOP inmate's commissary and phone account goes through the BOP National Lockbox in Des Moines, Iowa — not to the Forrest City facility directly. The BOP's own website makes this explicit: Do NOT send money to an inmate using this facility's address. Deposits routed to the prison directly will be returned or lost.
You have three practical options for the National Lockbox: MoneyGram ExpressPayment (receive code 7932, city "FBOP"); Western Union Quick Collect (city "FBOP," state "DC"); or a postal money order mailed to Federal Bureau of Prisons, Inmate Name and 8-digit Register Number, PO Box 474701, Des Moines, IA 50947-0001. MoneyGram and Western Union usually post to the inmate's account within a few hours; mailed money orders take significantly longer to process but carry no per-transaction fee. Deposits stay with the inmate across BOP transfers, so you do not need to re-route funds when he moves. Our overview of how to send money to an inmate compares options in detail.
Mail to a Forrest City Low inmate
Personal mail for FCI Forrest City Low inmates goes to Inmate Name and Register Number, FEDERAL CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION, PO Box 9000, Forrest City, AR 72336. That PO Box is specific to the Low; the Medium and Camp use different PO Boxes (verify on the BOP's Forrest City page). Include your full return address; letters without one are typically rejected.
Follow BOP national prohibited-items rules: no cash, no stamps, no glitter or glue, no Polaroids (photocopied or printed photos are fine), no stickers, and no perfumed paper. Books and publications generally must come directly from the publisher or an approved online retailer. Legal mail from an attorney or court, clearly marked as legal correspondence, is opened only in the inmate's presence and should be sent separately from personal letters. Our how to send mail to an inmate covers the details.
CorrLinks email and phone calls through ViaPath
The BOP offers CorrLinks email (the TRULINCS system) at FCI Forrest City Low. The inmate initiates a CorrLinks invitation from his end, you register at corrlinks.com, and once approved you can exchange secure text-only messages back and forth for a small per-message fee paid by the inmate. CorrLinks is not real-time chat — messages are subject to security screening and typically deliver within an hour or so — but it is meaningfully faster than USPS and has largely replaced letter-writing for many federal families.
Phone service is provided through ViaPath (formerly GTL) at BOP-set per-minute rates that are significantly lower than typical county-jail rates. Register your phone number on the inmate's approved list, and he calls you from his allotted monthly minutes. Our guide to calling an inmate covers the setup process.
Legal mail, emergencies, health concerns, and avoiding scams
Legal or privileged mail is opened only in the inmate's presence when properly marked. For urgent family emergencies such as a death, serious illness, or birth, call FCI Forrest City Low at (870) 630-6000 and ask the chaplain's office to relay the message to the inmate; the BOP chaplain system is generally the fastest reliable route for urgent family notices. If you are worried about a loved one's medical care, mental health, or safety inside, contact the facility directly through the chain of command, use the BOP's administrative-remedy process (starting with a BP-8 informal resolution), and keep a written record. External escalation paths include the BOP's regional office and the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of Justice.
Be cautious about paying third-party sites — the BOP Inmate Locator, CorrLinks, and the National Lockbox in Des Moines are the authoritative channels. Paying an unfamiliar site to "locate" a federal inmate or "send money faster" is a common way families lose money for something the system provides free or through named vendors. When online guidance conflicts with what the facility or BOP tells you, trust the official source and confirm anything important by calling (870) 630-6000.
Records and staying steady
Keeping the federal register number, the CorrLinks account, MoneyGram/Western Union receipts, and any court, projected release, or supervised-release dates organized in one place carries families through a BOP sentence with the least added friction. Federal inmates typically serve 85 percent of their sentence with 15 percent good-time credit under the First Step Act framework, and many are eligible for Earned Time Credits toward halfway-house placement — understanding those milestones and helping the person track his progress toward them is meaningful support.
Inside FCI Forrest City Low: how the facility is laid out
FCI Forrest City Low is a low security federal correctional institution with an adjacent minimum security satellite camp. It holds male offenders only, sits in Saint Francis County in the Eastern Arkansas judicial district, and is administered through the Bureau's South Central Region.
Layout matters more than families expect. Which yard or unit someone is assigned to drives their custody level, their program eligibility, and often their visiting schedule — so when you call, having the housing assignment to hand will get you a useful answer faster than the name alone.
How many people are held at FCI Forrest City Low
The Bureau of Prisons published a total of 1,858 people held at FCI Forrest City Low when this page was checked in July 2026. That splits into 1,584 at the institution itself and 274 at the adjacent minimum security satellite camp.
The camp is worth understanding as a separate place. It holds people in minimum security, and conditions, work assignments, and movement there differ substantially from the main institution — so "at Forrest City" can mean two quite different experiences. If you are not sure which one applies, the Bureau's inmate locator will tell you, and it is the first thing to establish before planning a visit.
The Bureau does not publish a design capacity alongside these counts, so there is no meaningful occupancy percentage to quote for a federal institution the way there is for a state prison. The figure also carries no published as-of date and is revised regularly, so treat it as the recent scale of the place rather than an exact headcount.
What the Bureau publishes about FCI Forrest City Low
One real advantage of a federal institution over a county jail is that far more is on the public record, per facility rather than in general terms. For FCI Forrest City Low that includes several documents worth reading before you call anyone.
A Prison Rape Elimination Act audit report was posted on September 8, 2023, as required under 28 CFR §115.403. The audit is carried out by an outside contractor rather than by the Bureau itself, which is what gives it weight. If you have a safety concern about this institution, reading the audit first tells you what an independent auditor already found and what the facility was told to fix.
The institution also publishes an Admissions and Orientation handbook, which sets out the rules, programs and daily routine your family member is actually living under, the current commissary list with prices, so you can see what money you send will actually buy and a statement of legal activities procedures, covering access to legal materials and to counsel.
The handbook and the visiting regulations are both published in Spanish as well as English, which is worth knowing if that is easier for the person who will be doing the visiting.
Reading the handbook and the commissary list before your first call or visit will answer most routine questions faster than the phone will, and it means the questions you do ask are the ones only staff can answer.
Make sure you have the right institution at this address
This is the single most common and most costly mistake families make here. FCI Forrest City Low shares one address — 1400 Dale Bumpers Road, Forrest City, AR 72335 — with FCI Forrest City Medium. Two separate institutions, different security levels, different staff, different phone numbers, and different visiting approval — at the same street address.
The facts on this page describe FCI Forrest City Low. If your family member is at FCI Forrest City Medium instead, its main line is 870-494-4200, and you should work from that institution's own visiting and mail instructions rather than these.
Because mail is addressed by institution and not just by street, a letter or a deposit routed to the wrong one of the two can be delayed or returned even though the address is correct. Confirm the exact institution name on the Bureau's inmate locator before you send anything or book a visit, and use that exact name on the envelope.
Who runs FCI Forrest City Low
The institution's main line is 870-630-6000. Use it for anything urgent — a medical emergency, a safety concern, confirming whether visiting is running — and ask for the watch commander or the shift supervisor rather than leaving a message with whoever answers.
Before you travel or send anything
Whatever a directory tells you — including this one — confirm the detail that matters to you with the operating agency before acting on it. Facility names, operators, designations and even addresses change, sometimes years before public records catch up, and the cost of acting on a stale entry is a wasted journey, a returned parcel or a deposit sent to the wrong account. A single phone call the morning you travel is worth more than any amount of research the week before.
If a search for someone returns nothing at all, work through the possibilities in order before assuming the worst. They may be held by a different authority than the one you are searching — a county sheriff rather than a state department, or the reverse. They may be in transit between facilities and temporarily unlisted. The name on the record may differ from the one you use, particularly where a middle name, a suffix or a hyphenated surname is involved. Or the record may simply not have updated yet, which is common in the first day or two after an arrest or a move. An empty result is far more often a search problem than a sign that something has gone wrong.
Your first steps if a loved one just arrived at Forrest City Low
If someone you love has just been designated to FCI Forrest City Low, focus first on the essentials: write down their federal register number and confirm placement through the BOP Inmate Locator, ask the inmate to send you a Form BP-A0629 for visitor approval, set up a CorrLinks account so you can exchange secure messages, register your phone number for calls, and fund an initial commissary deposit through MoneyGram or Western Union (or mail a money order to the Des Moines lockbox). Confirm his weekend visiting-day assignment under any alphabetical rotation. As a projected release date approaches, our guides on life after prison, finding work after prison, and applying for SNAP, Medicaid, and TANF after release cover what comes next, including the transition to federal supervised release.
