Because of the Corona Virus you can now visit people in PA prisons virtually.
If you are in prison society you can visit anyone otherwise you have to be on someones visiting list.
You can only be on one person’s list per prison
.
If you would like for Let’s Get Free to connect you with someone to visit, you can sign up here.
To get on someones list you must send your name, address on your id, birthdate and gender to the person you want to visit, they submit paperwork to add you to their visiting list.
Once you are approved you can follow these instructions:
Tips for signing up to the PA DOC Virtual Visiting System
- To Sign Up and Schedule a Visit, Click Here
- On the DOC Visiting Website you can find a lot of resources and tips about visiting.
- You can check the status of the prison visits here. Sometimes the technology goes out or there is quarantine restrictions and they cancel the visits for the day or a period of time.
- You can get a step by step joining a video visit photo guide here.
- Make sure you have the correct DOC # Those first two characters for many women are the letter O not number zeros. You want to make sure there are no other characters like hashtags. Just the the two letters four numbers no spaces.
- When you add a person sometimes the name will pop up further down the page. This had me stumped for a good 5 minutes because my window didn’t reveal the whole page – so i kept clicking “search for the person” and nothing was happening but it was popping up farther down the page.
- The first page after you click schedule a visit will take you to a page where you can add additional visitors. For example, one person in the family can schedule a visit with multiple people – so their names should pop up – you can click them and add them to your schedule visit.
- If you are confused by any of the pages when you are scheduling a visit or you’re not adding anyone else just hit next and you will go to the schedule page.
- Each prison has different visiting hours – the system knows what the hours are. Also prisoners are only allowed one visit a week and one weekend a month. So you might want to check with your visitor if they have preference so they can hold the weekend for family.
- After you schedule the visit you will receive an email that has a link in it. For your first visit click the link about 10 minutes before your visit. It will ask you to download an app called Polycom. Once its downloaded your visit room should pop up. Or you can go back and click the link again. Or click on the app on your computer. The DOC put together a guide with pictures that can help. Access that here.
- The platform seems similar to zoom and some members have found it a little more pixelated and sometimes freezes more. The prison records all the visits.
- You may be asked to show your identification at the beginning of the visit.