Can Inmates Make Calls on Weekends? Hours, Costs, and Limits

Yes, inmates can make phone calls on weekends at nearly every correctional facility in the country. Phones in housing units generally run on the same daily schedule all week, often from around 6:00 or 7:00 in the morning until roughly 11:00 at night. What changes on Saturday and Sunday isn’t access; it’s demand. With fewer scheduled programs, more people want the phones during the same windows, so wait times are longer and calls may come at unpredictable hours.

Weekend Hours at Most Facilities

There is no national schedule. Each warden or jail administrator sets phone hours based on the institution’s routines, staffing, and security needs. Weekend hours usually mirror the weekday schedule, though some facilities shift slightly on Saturdays or Sundays to work around visitation, programming, or counts.

For the person waiting on the outside, this means keeping your phone nearby throughout the facility’s operating window. If you need the exact hours for a specific jail or prison, the reliable way to get them is to call the facility directly or check its page on the parent agency’s website.

Expect longer lines at the shared phones late morning and early evening on weekends. Someone who normally reaches a phone within a few minutes on a Tuesday may need to wait considerably longer on a Saturday.

Whether a Specific Inmate Can Call You

Weekend access depends on more than facility hours. Several things shape how often any individual can get to a phone:

Facility type. County jails, state prisons, and federal institutions each set their own rules, and a local jail holding people pretrial often runs on a different schedule than a long-term state prison.
Security level. Minimum-security housing generally allows more flexible access. Maximum-security or restrictive housing has tighter windows and shorter calling periods.
Housing unit. Even inside one facility, units differ. An honor unit may have extended access while disciplinary or administrative segregation units may be limited to a few calls per week.
Monthly minute caps. In the federal system, inmates are limited to 300 minutes per calendar month, with an extra 100 minutes typically allowed in November and December. Wardens can grant additional minutes for good cause. State systems set their own limits.¹
Disciplinary record. Phone privileges can be suspended entirely as a sanction, and a suspension applies on weekends just as it does during the week.

How Inmate Calls Reach You

Calls only go one direction. The incarcerated person places the call; you cannot dial in. Before any call can reach you, your number has to be on that person’s approved contact list, which the inmate submits to facility staff for approval. Most facilities allow somewhere between 10 and 30 approved contacts. Changes usually require a written request and processing time, so updates don’t happen same-day.

To receive calls, you generally need a prepaid account with the facility’s phone provider. You create the account online or by phone, link it to your number, and deposit funds. When the call comes in, the per-minute cost is deducted from the balance. Some facilities also allow collect calls, where you accept the charges when the automated system announces the call. Collect tends to cost more per minute than prepaid.

Individual calls are time-capped. The federal standard is 15 minutes per call.¹ State and county limits typically fall in the 10 to 30 minute range. You’ll hear a warning before the line disconnects, and the person can call back if they still have minutes and a phone is open.

What Weekend Calls Cost

Rates are now capped by the FCC under the Martha Wright-Reed Act. The caps apply to both interstate and intrastate calls from every prison and jail nationwide, and they take full effect on April 6, 2026.² The per-minute maximum depends on the type and size of the facility:³

Prisons of any size: $0.09 per minute
Large jails with 1,000 or more inmates: $0.08 per minute
Medium jails, 350 to 999 inmates: $0.10 per minute
Small jails, 100 to 349 inmates: $0.11 per minute
Very small jails, 50 to 99 inmates: $0.13 per minute
Extremely small jails under 50: $0.17 per minute

Facilities may add up to $0.02 per minute on top of the cap to cover their own costs of providing phone service.³ A 15-minute audio call from a state prison should run no more than about $1.65 once the caps are fully enforced.

The 2024 FCC order also eliminated most ancillary fees. Charges for account setup, paper billing, and automated payments were folded into the rate caps rather than billed separately.⁴ Some providers have petitioned to reinstate certain transaction fees, so check your statements for anything beyond the per-minute rate.

When a Weekend Call Won’t Happen

Phone access is treated as a privilege, not a right, and facilities can suspend it. In the federal system, loss of telephone access is an available sanction for prohibited conduct at every severity level.⁵ Several phone-specific violations almost guarantee a suspension:

Three-way calling or call forwarding. Transferring a call or initiating a three-way is strictly prohibited, and providers detect these attempts automatically.⁶
Using another inmate’s personal access code, or sharing your own.
Dialing numbers that aren’t on the approved contact list.
Using the phone to threaten, harass, or intimidate anyone, which can trigger both privilege loss and a criminal referral.⁶

Sanctions can sometimes be stacked consecutively, which means multiple violations can take phone access away for months. A suspension doesn’t lift on the weekend.

Even without discipline, a weekend call can fail for ordinary reasons: a facility lockdown, an unscheduled count, a housing-unit restriction, a blocked number on your end, or certain VoIP and call-screening features that stop the automated system from connecting.

Attorney Calls Work Differently

Every call from a correctional facility is monitored and recorded, and using the phone counts as consent. Attorney calls are the one exception, but the protection isn’t automatic. The incarcerated person has to submit a request to a prison official, and the attorney typically coordinates a specific date and time with the facility’s counselor.⁶ An attorney reached through the regular phone system without that arrangement is monitored like anyone else. Anyone with an active legal case should make sure their lawyer schedules calls through the proper channel.

Video Calls as a Weekend Alternative

A growing number of facilities offer video calling through tablets or kiosks, including on weekends. The inmate initiates the session during designated hours, and you connect through the provider’s app or website. Sessions typically cap at 15 to 30 minutes. Video is also rate-capped by the FCC, maxing out at roughly $0.25 per minute from a prison once the facility additive is included, so a 15-minute video session runs about $3.75 or less.³ Not every facility offers it, and some restrict video to certain days or units, but it can be a useful fallback when audio phone lines are backed up on a Saturday.

Practical Steps Before the Weekend

Keep your prepaid balance above what a full call would cost, because a call that drops for insufficient funds puts the person back at the end of the line. Confirm your ringer is on and your number matches what the provider has on file. If you expect a call and nothing comes, higher weekend demand, counts, lockdowns, or a temporary housing-unit restriction can all delay things without anything being wrong. If the silence runs longer than normal for your situation, call the facility’s main line during business hours.

1
Federal Bureau of Prisons. BOP Program Statement P5264.08 – Inmate Telephone Regulations
2
Federal Register. Implementation of the Martha Wright-Reed Act – Rates for Interstate and Intrastate Incarcerated Peoples Communications Services
3
eCFR. 47 CFR Subpart FF – Incarcerated Peoples Communications Services
4
Federal Register. Incarcerated Peoples Communication Services – Implementation of the Martha Wright-Reed Act
5
eCFR. 28 CFR 541.3 – Prohibited Acts and Available Sanctions
6
Office of the Inspector General. Legal and Regulatory Background of Inmate Telephone Use