Start here if you have been told to submit DD Form 499. First, know what you are filling: Prisoner's Mail and Correspondence Record. The document is titled DD Form 499, Prisoner's Mail and Correspondence Record, March 2013.
Next, check the edition. You want not stated, currently carried as not stated by the publisher. Then confirm the form applies to you — this is a Department of Defense form, so you use it whether you serve in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, Space Force or Coast Guard under Defense jurisdiction.
Then settle the schedule. You are working under not stated, with not stated responsible for the document, and your organization layers its own deadlines on that. Ask before you assume a date.
Last in this stage, choose your method: complete it on screen, or print the blank form and fill it out in pen. The sections below take each route step by step.
Start at the header. Complete your identification before anything else, then work through the main entries, then finish at the certification. Skipping around causes contradictions between the top of the form and the bottom.
Before your first entry, look at the corner of the page and compare the printed date with not stated. If they do not match, stop and download again. Old copies circulate in shared drives for years, and a DD form is revised centrally for every service at once, so a superseded blank may not carry the fields your reviewer expects.
If a particular field puzzles you, read the instructions printed on the form first, then go to not stated. When the two disagree, follow the directive.
Download the form
Begin by choosing a file. Available here: PDF. Plan for 1 pages and about 200 entries.
Choose pdf as your default. Next, click inside a box. A fillable pdf responds by outlining the field and letting you type; the text stays in the document when you save it. A printable pdf does not respond, which tells you to print the page and complete it by hand.
Go with the typed route whenever the choice is yours. Consider what happens after you submit: the copy gets scanned, forwarded and filed, and each pass costs handwriting some legibility. Block letters help if you are stuck with a pen.
What the form asks for
- 1. Prisoner name (last, first, middle).
- 3. Marital status. Press space bar to mark X in first box if single, second bos if married, third box if divorced, or fourth box if legally separated.
- X first box if approved, second box if disapproved.
- 4. Authorized correspondents. Name, relationship and address (include zip code), line 1 of 10.
- Commander's initials.
- X first box if approved, second box if disapproved.
- 4. Authorized correspondents, line 2.
- Commander's initials.
- X first box if approved, second box if disapproved.
- a. Incoming mail (date).
- Incoming mail (date).
- Incoming mail (date).
- b. Outgoing mail (date).
- Outgoing mail (date).
- Outgoing mail (date).
- Incoming mail (date).
- Incoming mail (date).
- Incoming mail (date).
- Outgoing mail (date).
- Outgoing mail (date).
- Outgoing mail (date).
- Incoming mail (date).
- Incoming mail (date).
- Incoming mail (date).
Now that it is complete, send it where not stated or your local procedure says it goes. Before you do, make yourself a copy — scan it or save the file elsewhere. It costs you nothing and saves you the whole exercise if the original goes missing.
If the form points you to another document, you can find it by number alone. DD numbering runs across the whole Department, so you do not need to work out which service issued it — one number, one form, everywhere.
Watch out for one trap here. If your instructions cite a DA form as well, do not assume the numbers are connected. DA numbering belongs to the Army alone; DD numbering belongs to the Department and is administered by not stated or another Department office. The same number in each system means two unrelated forms, so read the prefix before you download.
Come back and check the edition next time you need this form. Editions change when the prescribing directive is reissued, when the information collected changes, or when the required notice language is updated, and none of those events reaches you directly. Verifying not stated at the moment you download is the whole defence.
Before you go, note what is not covered here. You have the blank form and instructions for completing it; you do not have legal guidance, and no statement on this page determines what any office will do with your submission. Direct those questions to not stated, to the personnel office that serves you, or to the office designated in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 499?
- DD Form 499, Prisoner's Mail and Correspondence Record, March 2013
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?