Texas: pen pal rules and how to send mail
Texas bars anyone serving a sentence that requires sex offender registration from being advertised on a pen-pal website, even when someone else places or pays for the ad. For everyone else, Texas has no rule against being listed. You can still list someone here: you confirm you understand before paying and again by email before the profile goes up.
Personal letters to people in Texas prisons go to a department-wide mail center, not to the prison. They are scanned, and the person receives a printed copy or a copy on their tablet.
Checked against the department's own pages . How we check, and corrections
Pen pal listings
“An inmate serving a sentence for which registration as a sex offender is required is prohibited from placing an advertisement soliciting a pen pal on an Internet website operated for that purpose, regardless of whether another person submits or pays for the advertisement for the inmate.”
Source: TDCJ Board Policy BP-03.91 (rev. 8, Feb. 20, 2026), Uniform Inmate Correspondence Rules, Section I.B.4, read 2026-10-07.
You can still list someone here if they understand the risk and want to go ahead. If the rule applies to them, we ask you to initial that you understand before you pay, and to confirm once more by email after. The profile goes up as soon as you confirm. If you change your mind before then, you get a full refund.
Sending mail to someone in Texas
Personal letters to people in Texas prisons go to a department-wide mail center, not to the prison. They are scanned, and the person receives a printed copy or a copy on their tablet.
The department gives this address format for personal mail (each prison's page below fills in its own name):
Texas Department of Criminal Justice Inmate’s Full First and Last Name + TDCJ Number PO Box 660400 Dallas, TX 75266-0400“Digital mail is your original postal mail that is scanned and delivered straight to the inmate’s secured tablet.” Department source
“Only written correspondence, greeting cards, drawings, and photos will be accepted for scanning.”
Electronic messages: On Securus eMessaging, you make an account, add the person by name and ID number, and pay per message. Step by step for each app. Department page.
Source: Texas mail page, read 2026-10-07. Rules change; the department's page is the final word.
See also: prison mail rules and your first letter.
Prisons in Texas (104)
How to write to someone at each one: the mailing format, mail rules and messaging, from the department's own pages.
Find someone in Texas
We check every profile's name and ID number against this locator within a day of it going live.