Minnesota Department of Corrections (MN DOC)

The Minnesota Department of Corrections (MN DOC) operates the state's prisons and supervises people on release across Minnesota. For families, the department's rules are what decide how you find a loved one, visit, write, call, and send money — and Minnesota has recently modernized both its mail handling and its money processing, so understanding the current systems is essential. This guide brings the essentials together so you can stay connected without learning every rule the hard way.

About the Minnesota prison system

Minnesota operates state correctional facilities across the state at every custody level, with the department managing both the prisons and supervised release afterward. The St. Paul headquarters is an administrative office where policy questions go, while mail and money are handled through the department's central systems and the specific facility. Every incarcerated person is assigned an OID number that identifies them throughout the system and is required for visits, mail, and deposits.

Because people are moved between facilities as their classification changes, confirming exactly where your person is held before acting is the habit that saves the most frustration. If you are not sure which facility holds them, our guide on how to find someone in jail or prison explains how to trace an incarcerated person through official records, and you can search their name directly on AllRecentArrests.us to see their facility and status. Treat the OID number, not the current address, as the constant you build everything around.

Visitation process and timings

Visiting in Minnesota starts with being on the incarcerated person's approved visitor list, after which each facility sets its own visiting days, hours, and procedures. Visiting-room rules are in place to keep facilities secure and orderly and to protect everyone present, and both incarcerated people and visitors who violate them during a visit can be subject to visiting restrictions — so following the posted rules closely protects your ability to keep visiting. Because the details vary by institution, the schedule that matters is the one for the facility holding your person.

Because approval takes time and rules vary by facility, it pays to prepare before your first trip. Our complete prison visitation guide covers getting approved, dress codes, and what to expect at the checkpoint. Dress codes and property limits are enforced at the gate, so plan to bring only what is allowed, and always confirm the specific facility's current visiting rules before you travel.

How to send money to an inmate in Minnesota

Minnesota centralized its money processing in January 2025, when the Office of Financial Management began handling all incoming deposits through a single location. To mail a deposit, send a money order or cashier's check — at no charge — with a money order deposit form, made payable to JPay, to P.O. Box 246450, Pembroke Pines, FL 33024, using the person's name and OID number. Electronic deposits through JPay are also available. One Minnesota-specific rule to know: incarcerated people cannot receive money from certain other incarcerated individuals, people still on paper supervision, or patients in secure treatment facilities.

That balance is what a person uses for canteen, phone time, and other approved purchases, so keeping it funded matters. Our overview of how to send money to an inmate compares the deposit methods and posting times, and our dedicated JPay guide walks through deposits and messaging on the platform Minnesota uses for lockbox processing.

Mail, care packages, and phone calls

Minnesota launched a system-wide mail management system through TextBehind in November 2024, a mail scanning and printing service that handles incoming correspondence rather than delivering the original letters. Importantly, TextBehind does not accept legal mail, money orders, personal checks, gift cards, or cash — those items are returned to the sender — so send personal mail through TextBehind as the department directs, route money through the deposit methods above, and send legal mail directly to the facility. Our breakdown of how to send mail to an inmate covers the address format and common rejection triggers.

Because you cannot mail packages directly, funding the account so the person can buy from canteen is the way to help with goods, and our explainer on how prison commissary works shows what that covers. Phone service lets the incarcerated person place calls to numbers on their approved list, so set up and fund a prepaid account tied to your number; under the 2026 FCC rate caps, per-minute rates have dropped sharply, and our guide to calling an inmate explains account setup and cost control.

Legal mail, emergencies, and avoiding scams

Legal or privileged mail from an attorney or a court is handled separately from ordinary correspondence and is generally opened only in the incarcerated person's presence, so keep legal documents out of personal letters and mark them properly. For emergencies such as a death, serious illness, or birth in the family, the reliable route is to call the facility and ask how to get an urgent message to the person or their case manager, rather than trying to reach them directly, and keeping the OID number handy makes that call go faster.

Be cautious, too, about where you get information and send money. The MN DOC inmate search and the department's named deposit vendors are the authoritative channels, so paying an unfamiliar third-party site to "locate" a person or forward a deposit is a common way families lose money for something the state provides directly. If you are worried about a loved one's medical care, mental health, or safety, contact the institution's staff directly, explain the situation clearly, and keep a record of who you spoke with and when, since a simple log makes follow-up far easier if the issue is not resolved the first time.

Staying consistent and preparing for release

Whatever mix of calls, mail, and visits you settle into, consistency matters more than any single grand gesture, and steady support is one of the most valuable things a family can offer someone inside. A predictable call, a letter that arrives on a schedule, and an occasional visit give the person something reliable to count on through a hard stretch, and they keep you informed about how they are doing as the sentence progresses.

As a release date approaches, preparation pays off — lining up identification, housing, and income before the day arrives makes the first weeks home far less chaotic. Our reentry guide for life after prison covers those first steps, our guide to finding work after prison addresses fair-chance hiring, and many returning citizens qualify for help through SNAP, Medicaid, and TANF soon after release.

Using TextBehind correctly

TextBehind is the biggest recent change in how families reach Minnesota inmates, and using it correctly is what makes the difference between a letter that reaches your person and one that is returned. Personal mail goes to the TextBehind processing address the department publishes, not to the facility, and only after scanning is the letter delivered inside. That means keep your letters plain, in dark ink on standard paper, and free of anything that will not scan well — and route legal mail, money, cards, or gifts through their proper channels instead, because TextBehind rejects those and returns them to you.

The upside of the system is that it can be faster and more reliable than the old paper route once you have it set up, and it takes contraband concerns off the table. Once you have the correct TextBehind address written down alongside your loved one's OID number, mailing a letter becomes routine rather than a worry.

Keeping records and staying consistent

Because Minnesota centralized its money processing at the Office of Financial Management in January 2025, all deposits now flow through a single lockbox rather than each facility, which makes keeping your JPay receipts and the person's OID number essential. Save the money-order deposit form the department publishes, keep a copy of each payment you send, and note the current facility so a transfer does not disrupt your account activity. Steady, consistent contact — a regular call, a weekly letter through TextBehind, and a predictable deposit schedule — is one of the most valuable things a family can offer someone across the length of a Minnesota sentence.

Above all, remember that Minnesota's systems — TextBehind for mail, the central OFM for deposits, the JPay lockbox — are designed to work together, and the more organized you are with the OID number, addresses, and receipts, the less friction you will run into. If you are supporting a household through an incarceration, our overview of financial help for families of incarcerated people lists resources that can ease the strain.

The department also sets the rules for county jails

Alongside running the state prisons, the department is the body whose rules govern jail facilities in Minnesota — it has been moving to adopt Rule 2911, which covers them. That means if your concern is about conditions in a county jail rather than a state prison, this department still sets the standard the jail is measured against, even though the sheriff runs the building.

The services provided here are nine state correctional facilities, the Challenge Incarceration Program at three sites, the rules governing county jail facilities and community supervision. That is a clinical remit rather than a custodial one — people are here because of a medical or behavioural health need, not because this is where they are held.

Minnesota's correctional facilities

Because this record is not itself a custody facility, the numbers worth knowing belong to the two that are. The most recent federal jail census, covering 2026, counted them separately:

• MCF-Stillwater
• MCF-Oak Park Heights
• MCF-Faribault
• MCF-Rush City
• MCF-Lino Lakes
• MCF-St. Cloud
• MCF-Moose Lake
• MCF-Shakopee
• MCF-Red Wing

Transfers are announced by facility name alone, so the list is worth having. Shakopee is the state's facility for women, and Red Wing works with younger people — placement at either says something about who is held there that the name does not.

Those are census figures for a single reporting year and are now several years old, so treat them as the scale of each facility rather than a current count. Neither figure describes this record — this address is the hospital, and it holds no one on its own authority.

What records still exist for the Minnesota Department of Corrections

Closing a prison does not erase its statistical record. The department continues to publish pre-closure reports for this institution, including facility pages for each of the nine correctional facilities, the rules governing jail facilities in Minnesota, including Rule 2911 and search tools for individuals in custody and for fugitives.

These are worth knowing about if you are reconstructing a timeline — confirming when someone was held here, what the conditions and population were at the time, or supporting a claim that depends on how the institution was operating. They are statistical rather than individual, so they will not contain a named person's file; for that you need a records request to the department rather than a published report.

Who runs the Minnesota Department of Corrections

The institution's main line is 651-361-7200. 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.

What this department operates

The department lists 9 adult institutions. This record is the department itself rather than any one prison, so it has no beds, no visiting room and no warden of its own — which is why the practical details you need always belong to a specific institution, not to headquarters.

The Challenge Incarceration Program is worth asking about specifically. It is a separate track rather than an ordinary placement, and it runs at three sites that are not among the main prisons.

Its facilities are at Faribault, Lino Lakes, Moose Lake, Oak Park Heights, Red Wing, Rush City, Shakopee, St. Cloud and Stillwater, with the Challenge Incarceration Program running at Shakopee, Togo and Willow River. Knowing the list is more useful than it looks: a transfer is announced by institution name, often with no explanation of where that is or how far you will now have to travel.

That distinction matters when you are chasing an answer. Department policy sets the framework — visiting eligibility, approved vendors, grievance procedure — but the schedule, the phone number, and the person who can actually help are all at the institution holding your family member. Start by confirming which prison that is, then work with that facility directly.

How to find someone in this department's custody

The department's official search tool is the department's search for individuals and fugitives, at mn.gov/doc/family-visitor/search-individuals-fugitives. The search covers people in state custody or under state supervision. County jail detainees are a county matter and are searched separately.

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 someone you love has just entered the Minnesota system, focus first on the essentials: confirm which facility holds them and write down their OID number, get on their approved visitor list, and set up a deposit — a JPay lockbox money order or an electronic JPay payment — so calls and canteen purchases are possible. Remember that personal mail now goes through TextBehind and that legal mail, money, and cards cannot be sent that way. When a policy you read online conflicts with what the facility says, trust the facility, and confirm anything important directly before you rely on it.

Steady, informed contact through Minnesota's newer systems takes a little more setup up front, but once you have TextBehind and JPay working for your household, the rest of a sentence runs on far less friction.