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If someone you love has just gone into prison, this is the thing that decides whether they can ring you. It is not complicated, but almost none of it is explained anywhere, and you cannot start it from the outside.
Everything below comes from HMPPS policy and GOV.UK. Each fact has a number beside it pointing to the document it came from. Where the rules leave something to the prison, this page says so instead of guessing.
One
People in prison cannot have a mobile phone. They ring you from a prison phone, using a PIN — a code that belongs to them and pays from their own money.[1]
The phone will only dial numbers already on their account. GOV.UK puts it plainly: they can only call people named on their list of friends and family, and that list is checked by security when they first arrive.[1]
You cannot ring in. There is no number for you to call and no form for you to fill in. Everything starts with them.[1]
The list is not paperwork for its own sake. It is there to stop people in prison contacting those they must not contact — victims of their offence, witnesses, and people they are barred from approaching by a court.[3, 7.5][2, 2.26]
Policy makes those checks compulsory for certain groups. They include people held as category A, people remanded or convicted of terrorism offences, people identified as a risk to children, people convicted or remanded for harassment or stalking or subject to a court order, people identified as domestic abuse perpetrators, people dealt with for a sexual offence listed in Schedule 3 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, and people who present a risk of intimidating victims or witnesses.[3, 7.5]
For everyone else, the same policy says checking is not mandatory and can be “considered and managed locally in consideration of risk and resource”.[3, 7.5] That single sentence is why two families in two prisons get two different experiences, and why so much of this page says to ask the wing.
Staff can listen to and record most calls. Some are not monitored — calls to a legal adviser, for example.[1] The person inside signs a communications compact when they arrive that sets this out.[3, 8.1]
Two
Ask staff to add the number
They put your number forward to be added to their PIN account. How a prison takes that request — a paper application, wing staff, or a kiosk — varies, and the policy does not set one method. Ask the wing which it is. [UNVERIFIED — check source]
Give your name and how they know you
The checks staff carry out include confirming how you know the person inside, so that is what they will be asked for.[3, 7.5]
Wait, and chase from the inside
Only they can ask the wing what has happened to it. There is no equivalent route from outside.
Get them the number, correctly
Read it out digit by digit on a call, or send it by post. Have them read it back. A single wrong digit is the failure nobody suspects, because the form was accepted and no error is ever reported.
Answer the phone
The prison may ring you to check who you are. Take the call and answer it honestly. See what they may ask you for.
Wait without reading into it
Neither of you is told when the check starts or finishes. The first sign it worked is that the phone rings. Silence is not a refusal.
PSI 49/2011 allows prisoners on a call enabling regime up to 20 social numbers, with 15 legal and confidential access numbers held separately.[2, 6.13] If they are near that limit, something has to come off before yours goes on.
Three
Where checks are done, policy says they must include at least three things.[3, 7.5]
Who you are
That you are the person the prisoner says you are.
How you know them
Your relationship to the person inside.
That you consent
Whether you are happy to be called on that number.
Some families are asked for a utility bill, a tenancy agreement or something else showing the number or address is theirs. Nothing in the published policy sets a national list of documents, so what is asked for varies. [UNVERIFIED — check source]
If you cannot produce what is asked for — the bill is in a partner’s name, you are staying with family, you are in temporary accommodation, the account is prepaid — say that plainly. Explain what you do have. Ask the wing what else they will accept.
Do not borrow somebody else’s documents, put the number in another name, or describe the line as something it is not. A number added on a false basis can be taken off later, and the consequences fall on the person inside.
If you are stuck, the Prisoners’ Families Helpline deals with exactly this and costs nothing — details below.
Four
No published HMPPS policy sets a deadline for adding a number.
We looked. Neither PSI 49/2011 nor the interception policy framework gives a timescale, and we would rather tell you that than invent one. If another guide quotes you a number of working days, ask it where that came from.
What GOV.UK does say is that the list is checked by security when someone first arrives, and that it may take a few days before they are able to call at all.[1]
For numbers added later, policy tells staff to minimise delays and to add each number to the account once it has been checked, rather than waiting for every number on a list to clear. It also says prisoners should be told about each addition as soon as is practical.[3, 7.8]
Check the digits first. It is the most common cause and the least suspected, because nothing is ever reported back as an error.
Then the person inside should ask the wing directly what has happened to that number. They are the only one who can. If they get nowhere, they can use the prison’s complaints process, and you can ring the Prisoners’ Families Helpline for advice on what to ask for.
A number can also be refused. Policy lists reasons including that intelligence suggests the number is an attempt to get around restrictions, or that there is reason to think the number belongs to another prisoner.[3, 7.5] Prisons do not always explain which applies.
Five
HMPPS policy requires prisons to restrict requests to add 0800 numbers, and numbers linked to call diversion and re-routing services, because such numbers can be used to divert calls to people the prisoner is not allowed to contact.[3, 7.9]
That framework was issued on 11 August 2026. It is the clearest statement of this rule that exists, and it applies across England and Wales.
Several companies sell families a cheap landline number that forwards calls on to a mobile. How those numbers are built. On the policy as written, those are the numbers this paragraph describes.
A number that is refused, or accepted and later withdrawn, costs the person inside their contact with you while it is sorted out. What to check if a number stops working. That is the risk to weigh before paying anyone for one.
RingYard sells a landline number, so this paragraph is about us too and it would be dishonest to leave it out. Our number is built to ring your own handset directly rather than to forward a call from one line to another.
Whether a particular prison treats that as falling inside the restriction is their judgement, not ours. We cannot promise you it will be accepted, and you should not believe any company that does. Approval is given to a number, by a prison, on the application of the person inside. Nobody can sell it to you in advance.
If the wing asks how the number works, tell them exactly what it is. Never describe it as something else.
Prisoners may ring business numbers, but only to speak to family and friends. They are not permitted to make commercial enquiries or order goods by phone.[2, 6.18, 6.19]
Putting one number on several prisoners’ accounts draws attention: policy names a reasonable suspicion that a number belongs to another prisoner as a reason not to add it.[3, 7.5] If your household is genuinely in touch with more than one person inside, be straight about it when asked.
Six
All three are charities. None of them is selling you anything, and all of them know more about this than we do.[4]
Prisoners’ Families Helpline
0808 808 2003
Monday to Friday, 9am to 8pm. Saturday and Sunday, 10am to 3pm.[5]
info@prisonersfamilies.org[4]
Pact
Prison Advice and Care Trust. Support for families and significant others, listed by GOV.UK for prisons in England and Wales.[4]
prisonadvice.org.uk
POPS
Partners of Prisoners and Families Support Group, also listed by GOV.UK.[4]
partnersofprisoners.co.uk
GOV.UK also lists Barnardo’s, the Prison Reform Trust, Nepacs, Ormiston Families and Invisible Walls, and separate services for Scotland and Northern Ireland.[4]
Open any of them and check us. If something here is wrong or out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
[1]Staying in touch with someone in prison
GOV.UK — current guidance. Read 2026-08-23.
https://www.gov.uk/staying-in-touch-with-someone-in-prison[2]Prisoner communications policy: PSI 49/2011
HM Prison and Probation Service / Ministry of Justice — in force since 1 October 2011, page last updated 11 August 2026. Read 2026-08-23.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/prisoner-communications-policy-psi-492011[3]Interception, monitoring and security of prisoner communications policy framework
HM Prison and Probation Service / Ministry of Justice — issued 11 August 2026. Read 2026-08-23.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/interception-monitoring-and-security-of-prisoner-communications-policy-framework[4]Support for families and friends of prisoners
GOV.UK — current guidance. Read 2026-08-23.
https://www.gov.uk/support-for-families-friends-of-prisoners[5]Prisoners' Families Helpline
prisonersfamilies.org — opening hours read from the site. Read 2026-08-23.
https://www.prisonersfamilies.org/Anything marked [UNVERIFIED — check source] is something we could not find in a published document. It is flagged rather than filled in with a guess. This page is not legal advice, and it does not replace what the prison tells you.
RingYard sells a landline number for families of people in prison. Calls from prison to a landline are charged at a lower rate than calls to a mobile, so their credit goes further. Read the options compared — including the two that cost nothing.