Wondering how you can find a friend or family member in jail? This post will show you how to locate them.

People get arrested every day and are put to jail. Sometimes it is for a minor offense while other times they are locked up for years for a serious felony. For friends and family members of someone who has disappeared, if after checking hospitals does not turn up anything, the next rational step should be to check with the jails and police. If you can’t locate a particular friend or family member and are wondering whether they are in jail or not, you can look them up in the jail system. We’ll show you how to find a person in prison. If these tips don’t help, contact us, our team of skip tracers can help.

Use the Federal Bureau of Prisons Website

The Government is good at keeping track of inmates. There is a public database containing information on federal inmates incarcerated from 1982 to 2020 (When this article is written). This database is maintained by the Federal Bureau of Prison, and you can search this database to find the person that you are trying to locate. Visit https://www.bop.gov/ and then click on the ‘Inmates’ section. Now click on ‘Find an Inmate.’ You will have the option to search by the name of the incarcerated inmate or the BOP Register Number. You might not have the BOP Register Number, so you should search by name. You can narrow down the search by entering the age, sex, and race of the person along with their name.  You may get several listings, and you will have to sift through them to find the person you are looking for.

Use VINELink

If you are looking for a state inmate, you can use the VINELink. To find an inmate through this service, you must know the state in which the person was incarcerated. You can search by entering the first and last name of the person or the inmate ID number. Complete the additional fields like ‘age range’ and ‘date of birth’ to narrow down the search.

State & County Systems

Depending on what state you’re living in, the State, County, and City have access to public records and information that you can use in your search. Google: [State] Inmate Search or [County] Inmate Search, and you’ll find the Department of Corrections for the state you’re looking into. As an example: https://www.dc.state.fl.us/offendersearch/ – that’s the Florida Department of Corrections. From there, you can search by Name or DC Number. Every state is going to have an inmate database.

These links update regularly, but not immediately. Sometimes, the links can take up to a month to update. If you’re looking for a missing person, these links give you a start. Finding an incarcerated person is not difficult, but it does take time. If you followed the steps listed above, and you still can’t locate the inmate, contact our office. We have access to private databases and tools to help us locate inmates across the United States.