Before you go

Ten things, ranked by what getting them wrong costs you. Every one of these has a deadline, and none of them can be done from inside.

The ten

1. Fix your PSR before sentencing

   After sentencing it cannot be amended. A correction gets stapled next to the error and the error stays, and everything downstream keeps reading it — your points, your custody level, your programming, your RDAP eligibility.

   Your lawyer is reading it for the sentence. Read it yourself for everything else.

2. Turn off two-factor and hand someone real access

   Every recovery flow assumes you have a phone. You will not have a phone. Print recovery codes, give somebody actual access to your password manager rather than a promise of access, and assume the person holding it becomes unreachable.

   Cost of skipping it: months of your life after release, spent on hold. Your digital life is what that actually looks like.

3. Write the handoff document

   Accounts, contacts, deadlines, what they are authorized to decide without asking you, your sentence math, and the halfway house timeline with the policy cite.

   You will not be able to look anything up inside. They can. That is the entire reason it exists.

4. Get your substance history documented, if it is real

   RDAP is the largest single sentence reduction most people can get, and eligibility is verified against your PSR. Before sentencing is the window, and it closes.

   If it is not real, you do not qualify, and building a history that does not exist creates a bigger problem than it solves.

5. Ask the judge for recommendations

   Facility or region, RDAP, and permission to self-surrender. They are free, routinely granted, and carry some weight at designation.

   They are also not placements. Nobody can guarantee you a camp, and anyone charging you for one is selling something they do not control.

6. Handle medical and dental now

   Get the procedure done, get prescriptions documented, get records in writing. Care inside is slower and narrower, and a dental problem you could fix in an afternoon becomes a months-long process.

7. Execute a power of attorney and sort the money

   Signature authority, autopay on anything whose lapse cascades, and a decision about what gets cancelled rather than carried.

8. Test the money and phone channels before you need them

   Have your people do a small deposit so you both know it works. And test the phone number they will be answering — the system requires a keypress to accept, and some virtual numbers do not pass it through. Google Voice is the usual failure.

9. Start the visiting list now

   Approval means forms, a background check, and weeks of waiting. Starting after you arrive is how families lose their first few months of visits.

10. Run your own points

    Classification is a scored system, not a judgment call. Calculate it yourself so you know what to expect before the letter arrives — and so you can recognize a sales pitch when you hear one.

Every item here is a paragraph standing in for a chapter. The chapters are in what to expect, which walks the same ground in order, from the presentence report to the door.

Hand the rest of this site to your family

You will not be able to look things up once you're inside. They can, and this is where: everything written for the one waiting — a twelve-part guide to mail, visiting, money, and your release date, plus their own FAQ and checklist. Alongside it, a guide to every facility with email alerts when visiting stops, the support group directory, calculators for your release math, and free answers when they have questions.

Send them the link before you report, not after they can't reach you.

Somebody has a report date and none of this. Pass it on.