Mail in Iowa (Iowa DOC)

How personal mail works now

Iowa does not deliver friends-and-family mail to the prison. Since 2022, the Iowa Department of Corrections has had incoming personal (non-legal) mail processed off-site by a private vendor, Pigeonly, at a central processing center in Las Vegas, Nevada. Pigeonly opens, screens, and scans each item, and a copy is delivered to the facility. Personal mail sent directly to an Iowa prison is returned.

Address personal mail with the incarcerated individual’s name and offender ID number, the facility name and its facility ID number, and the Pigeonly lines:

Incarcerated Individual Name – Offender ID Number
Facility Name – Facility ID Number
PO Box 96777
Las Vegas, NV 89193

The same Pigeonly P.O. box is used for every Iowa facility — the facility name and facility ID number in the address are what route the mail.

Facility ID numbers

Each Iowa prison has a numeric facility ID code that must be on the envelope along with the facility name. Two confirmed codes are:

• Iowa State Penitentiary — 1110
• Anamosa State Penitentiary — 1106

The facility ID codes for Iowa’s other institutions are not listed here. Confirm the correct code for the specific facility on the Iowa DOC “How Do I Write an Offender” page before sending mail, since the wrong code can delay or misroute an item.

Photos

Photos may be included with personal mail through Pigeonly. Reported limits are up to about 10 photos (each photo counts as a page) at 4x6 size. Polaroids and instant photos are not allowed, and photos with nudity or sexual content are not allowed. Photos can also be ordered through Pelipost, an approved photo-print app that ships prints into the Pigeonly processing pipeline. Confirm the current photo count, size, and content rules on the official policy before sending.

Legal and privileged mail

Legal mail does not use Pigeonly. Mail from courts, attorneys, and other privileged correspondents goes directly to the facility where the person is housed — to the prison’s own street address — not to the Las Vegas scanning center, and is handled under the rules for legal mail. Attorneys confirm the facility’s current handling instructions with the prison.

Books, publications, and packages

The current rules for books, publications, and packages are not detailed here. Iowa generally restricts these to approved-vendor or publisher-direct shipments sent to the facility rather than to Pigeonly, but the exact rules should be confirmed on the official Iowa DOC mail policy before ordering. Look up the address for the specific facility, since each prison’s address differs.

Verify Before Acting

For the general, nationwide overview of this topic, see the national guide: Staying in Touch.