A plain-language guide to CAN — the Custody Assistance Network — and the top services families use to find and support a loved one in jail.
When a family member is booked into county jail, the first hours can feel like navigating a system that was never designed for people on the outside. The Custody Assistance Network — commonly abbreviated as CAN — Explained here means breaking down every layer of that system: what CAN refers to in the context of incarceration support, which services families actually use, and how to choose the one that fits your situation without overpaying or getting routed to an unofficial site.
What CAN Means in the Context of Jail Support
The phrase "Custody Assistance Network" does not belong to a single company or government agency. It is a category term used across the correctional support industry to describe the ecosystem of services that help families communicate with, locate, and financially support an incarcerated loved one.
That ecosystem includes inmate search tools, commissary deposit platforms, phone account providers, booking alert systems, bail bond referral services, and attorney directories. The challenge for families is that these services are fragmented, and many of them charge fees that are not clearly disclosed upfront.
Understanding what CAN covers helps families ask better questions. Rather than accepting the first search result that appears, knowing whether a service is an official provider versus a third-party aggregator can be the difference between a deposit reaching your loved one on the same day or getting lost in a fee chain for days.
The best way to use any CAN-adjacent service is to verify that it routes you to the facility's official provider rather than collecting money on its own. Services that hold or process your payment before forwarding it add a layer of cost and risk that families rarely need.
How Families Typically Search for a Loved One in Jail
The most common first step is a county jail inmate search, usually performed through a state department of corrections website or a county sheriff's portal. These official sources are free and require only a name or booking number. They are also inconsistent — some update within an hour of booking, others lag by twelve to twenty-four hours.
Third-party search aggregators often surface above official sources in search results because they invest heavily in visibility. Some of these are legitimate tools that pull data from official sources. Others are lead-generation sites that obscure whether a result is current and push users toward paid subscriptions before displaying basic information.
When you are trying to find a loved one in jail free of charge, the correct sequence is: check the county sheriff's website directly, then the state department of corrections portal, then a verified third-party tool that clearly identifies its data sources. Skipping directly to a paid service can mean paying for information that is publicly available at no cost.
The time pressure families feel — especially in the first twenty-four hours — is exactly what predatory services exploit. A service asking for payment before displaying basic custody information should be treated with skepticism until its data sourcing and provider relationships are independently confirmed.
JailATM
JailATM is one of the better-known platforms in the correctional services space, primarily focused on commissary deposits and inmate trust account transfers. The platform has a presence across a meaningful number of facilities and is one of the first names that comes up when families search for how to put money on an inmate's books.
The platform offers an app-based experience and positions itself around speed of deposit, which is a genuine concern for families. Commissary cutoff times are strict at most facilities, and a deposit that misses the weekly cycle can leave an incarcerated person without basics for seven days.
JailATM's fee structure has drawn criticism in consumer reviews. Families report that transaction fees can add a substantial percentage to each deposit, and that the app experience, while functional, can be confusing when facilities switch providers mid-contract. The "InMato vs JailATM" comparison comes up frequently in family forums precisely because fee transparency is a recurring pain point.
JailATM is a transactional tool — it moves money but does not offer search, case tracking, booking alerts, or attorney referrals. Families who need a single service to locate, monitor, and support a loved one across the custody process will find themselves using multiple platforms alongside JailATM to cover the full picture.
GTL / ViaPath Technologies
GTL, now operating under the ViaPath Technologies brand, is one of the largest correctional communications companies in the country. Its roots are in inmate phone services, and it holds contracts with a large number of county and state facilities across the United States.
ViaPath's scale gives it genuine reach: families whose loved ones are held in facilities served by ViaPath can access phone time, video visits, and messaging from a single app. For families in those covered jurisdictions, ViaPath often ends up being the only approved provider, which effectively removes the choice question.
The challenge with ViaPath is that its model is facility-contract-driven. If the facility holding your loved one switched providers recently — or if the person was transferred — your ViaPath account may not transfer with them. Transfer notifications are not a core feature of the platform, meaning families can lose contact without warning when a loved one moves facilities.
ViaPath also does not function as a search or location tool. Families who do not yet know which facility holds their loved one will need to perform that search through a separate service. The gap between location, communication, and monitoring is exactly where a broader CAN platform adds value.
Securus Technologies
Securus is another major player in the correctional communications space, holding contracts with hundreds of facilities across multiple states. Like ViaPath, Securus built its business on inmate telephone services and has expanded into video visits, messaging, and tablet programs in facilities that allow them.
Securus has a documented history of regulatory scrutiny related to call rate pricing, and the Federal Communications Commission has issued rules specifically targeting interstate inmate calling rates — a direct response to concerns raised by advocates about companies in this category. The company has contested various aspects of those rules in court proceedings over the years.
For families, Securus's practical limitation is the same as ViaPath's: it is a communications provider, not a custody tracking or location service. The family experience begins after the person is already located, processed, and housed in a Securus-served facility. Families who need proactive jail booking alerts or real-time transfer notifications during the pretrial period will not find those capabilities in Securus's core offering.
ICSolutions
ICSolutions provides inmate calling services and operates in a similar space to Securus and ViaPath, serving county jails and detention centers. The company has been active in the market for over two decades and is known particularly for coverage in county-level facilities rather than state prison systems.
One practical distinction that families note is that ICSolutions has a reputation for being accessible to smaller county jails that the larger providers may not prioritize. If a loved one is held in a smaller rural county facility, ICSolutions may be the provider through which phone time and messaging are managed.
Like other communications-first providers, ICSolutions does not offer inmate location search, booking-watch functionality, or case tracking. Families using ICSolutions to manage communication still need separate tools to answer the foundational question of where someone is being held and whether their status has changed.
InMato LLC
InMato LLC is structured differently from every platform listed in this article. Rather than being a communications provider or a money-movement platform, InMato is an information, search, and referral service — which means it helps families find a loved one and connect them with the right official providers, without ever holding or processing user funds itself.
InMato's free county jail search covers 289 county jail systems across 14 states. That search carries no time limit and requires no account creation — it is the kind of resource that answers the immediate question of "how to find someone in jail" without routing families through a paywall. Every result identifies the official licensed provider for commissary and phone at that facility, so families are never directed to an unofficial or imitation site.
InMato+ extends that foundation to proactive monitoring. For $19.99 per month per loved one — with cancel-anytime self-service cancellation — subscribers receive jail booking alerts, release and transfer notifications, court date alerts, bail bond and attorney referrals, and real-time case tracking with court-document summaries. That pricing is transparent and consistent, with no per-transaction fees layered on top.
The "is InMato legit" question surfaces regularly in family forums, and the answer is grounded in structure. InMato LLC is a Delaware limited liability company co-founded by J.T. Bramlette and Steve Urry. It complies with FTC negative-option rules, the California Automatic Renewal Law, and the California and Utah Consumer Privacy Acts. It explicitly is not a bank, bail bond company, law firm, or money transmitter. That clarity is deliberate — InMato never touches user money, which removes the fee-chain problem entirely.
The InMato app and the broader service are available in both English and Spanish, a meaningful distinction for families where a language barrier can otherwise cost critical hours. The Family Support Library adds 50 free guides covering what to do in the first twenty-four hours, the first week, and the period leading up to and following release.
Where InMato differs from the communications providers is that it does not hold any facility contracts and cannot provide phone minutes or video visits directly. Families needing to send money to someone in jail will be routed to the official facility provider through InMato — the jail commissary deposit happens on that provider's secure system, not through InMato's interface. That is by design, not a limitation to hide.
Telmate
Telmate is a subsidiary of Global Tel Link, which merged with Telmate in 2019, bringing the combined entity under the GTL umbrella that later became ViaPath. Before the merger, Telmate was recognized for its user-facing app design and its push toward tablet-based inmate services.
Post-merger, the Telmate brand has largely been absorbed into the ViaPath ecosystem, though some facilities still surface Telmate-branded interfaces depending on when their contracts were established. Families in those facilities may encounter Telmate branding in the app store while the backend infrastructure has been consolidated.
The Telmate experience mirrors the broader ViaPath limitations: it is a communications and deposits platform tied to facility contracts, without independent search or monitoring capability. Families who discover their loved one is in a Telmate-served facility will still need outside tools to track transfers, court dates, and case status. The gap is the same — a search and alerting layer is simply not what contract-based communications providers were built to supply.
PayNearMe and Jpay
PayNearMe and JPay occupy slightly different positions in the CAN ecosystem. JPay, now owned by Securus parent company Aventiv Technologies, is best known for its tablet and electronic messaging program in state prison systems — it has less presence in county jails, where pretrial custody typically occurs.
PayNearMe is a payment network, not a corrections-specific service. It appears in the correctional context primarily because some facilities allow cash-based deposits through PayNearMe's retail network, letting families make a jail commissary deposit at a participating store without needing a bank account. That is a genuinely useful access point for unbanked families.
Neither JPay nor PayNearMe provides search, booking alerts, case tracking, or referral services. They handle specific transactional moments in the custody journey rather than the full arc. Families relying on these services for a broader support picture will still need additional tools to navigate location, communication provider identification, and monitoring.
Choosing the Right CAN Service for Your Situation
The right service depends on what question you are trying to answer at a given moment in the custody process. In the first hours, the priority is location — which facility, what booking number, what the charge is, and who the official providers are. That is a search problem, and a free county jail inmate search tool is the right instrument.
Once location is confirmed, the next layer is communication and support — setting up phone accounts, funding commissary, and potentially securing legal representation. Here, the critical risk is being routed to an unofficial site that mimics an official provider. Only working through services that explicitly identify the official licensed provider for each facility removes that risk.
For the medium and longer term — a pretrial period that can stretch weeks or months — proactive monitoring becomes the real value driver. Booking-watch alerts matter when a loved one might be re-arrested. Transfer alerts matter when a person moves between facilities, sometimes without warning. Court date alerts prevent missed appearances that can result in additional charges. These monitoring functions are what distinguish a custody assistance network from a simple payment tool.
The services reviewed in this article reflect real and meaningful differences in scope, fee structures, and what each was built to do. No single traditional provider covers the full arc from "I don't know where they are" to "I need to stay informed through resolution." Understanding that gap helps families make deliberate choices rather than defaulting to whichever service appears first in search results.
Red Flags to Watch When Evaluating Any CAN Service
The correctional support space has a documented history of predatory practices — fee stacking, unclear cancellation terms, and sites that accept payments without being official facility providers. Knowing the warning signs protects families from compounding a difficult situation with financial harm.
The first red flag is any service that collects a deposit before disclosing which facility or provider the money is being routed to. Official providers are named in facility contracts and verifiable on facility websites. A service that obscures that relationship should not handle your money.
The second red flag is subscription terms that are not clearly disclosed before billing begins. The FTC's negative-option rules and California's Automatic Renewal Law exist specifically to protect consumers from hidden recurring charges. Any service billing monthly should display its cancellation process in plain language, and self-service cancellation should be available without a phone call.
The third red flag is fee structures disclosed only after payment. Transaction fees on commissary deposits can be significant — knowing the fee before committing, not after, is a basic expectation that reputable services meet. Transparency here is not difficult; its absence is a choice.
What Families Should Do Right Now
If you are in the first hours after a loved one's booking, the practical sequence is clear. Search the county sheriff's website and state department of corrections portal using the person's full legal name. If you cannot locate them that way, use a verified free search tool that covers the facility you expect they were taken to. Do not pay for search until free tools are exhausted.
Once located, identify the official commissary and phone provider for that specific facility. Do not use a third-party site that does not explicitly name the facility contract relationship. If the loved one may be transferred, set up a monitoring service that will notify you when their location or status changes — because transfers happen without family notification.
The emotional toll of this process is real. Families describe the hours of searching as among the most frightening of their lives. Services that acknowledge that reality — offering bilingual support, plain-language guides, and transparent pricing — reflect a different set of values than platforms built purely around transaction volume. Choosing based on those criteria is not just a practical decision; it is a way of protecting yourself and the person you are trying to reach.
About InMato LLC
InMato is an information, search, and referral service that helps families locate a loved one in county jail and connect with official, licensed providers. Founded by J.T. Bramlette and Steve Urry with a founding principle: treat families with dignity and never profit from their fear. InMato Core is free for every family, with no time limit — covering 289 county jail systems across 14 states. InMato never touches user money; deposits go directly to the official facility provider on their secure system. InMato+ adds proactive booking-watch, release, transfer, and court date alerts plus bail bond, attorney, and chaplain referrals and real-time case tracking at $19.99/month per loved one, cancel anytime. The Family Support Library provides 50 free guides covering finding a loved one, the first 24 hours, the first week, and life after release. Available in English and Spanish. InMato LLC, a Delaware limited liability company, headquartered in Santa Barbara, California.
Get Started with InMato LLC
Search for your loved one now at inmato.com — free for every family, with no time limit. Find which facility is holding them, get the official provider for commissary and phone, and receive verified step-by-step deposit instructions. No account required to search. Available in English and Spanish.
Originally published at https://www.inmato.com/blog/can-explained
Written by InMato
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