Inmate locator, across three custody systems.
When someone is taken into custody, a county jail, a state prison or federal custody could be holding them, and each is searched in a different place. Type a name and one search looks in all three, and tells you which jurisdictions answered.
Already know the state? Inmate search · Only the county jail? Jail roster · Federal? Federal inmate search
| Record | Facility | Status | Booked / admitted |
|---|---|---|---|
| Daniel K. Okafor · 58 | Northern State Prison, NJ | In custody | 2021-05-14 |
| Daniel Okafor · 58 | Harris County Jail, TX | Held · $5,000 bond | 2026-10-09 |
| Dan Okafor · 56 | Jefferson County Jail, KY | Released | 2024-11-18 |
| Daniel Okafor · 57 | Hudson County Jail, NJ | Released | 2018-05-29 |
| Daniel Okafor | Federal Bureau of Prisons | No record | live lookup |
Inmate locator: custody is not one system, it is three. A locator search fails far more often because it was pointed at the wrong system than because the person is not there. These are the three, in the order a case usually moves through them.
County jail
State prison
Federal custody
How to use an inmate locator by name. Four steps, whichever system turns out to be holding them.
Enter the name
First and last name. An age or birth year helps, since jail rosters often publish an age rather than a full date of birth.
Leave the state open
Custody follows the place of arrest. Searching every state finds someone picked up far from home.
Read which system answered
A county jail booking, a state prison record or federal custody, each labelled for what it is.
Follow the citation
Custody changes quickly. Confirm with the jail, the prison or the Bureau of Prisons before acting on a result.
Inmate locator came back empty? A blank result is usually the wrong question, not an answer.
Someone searching a single county site, or a single state system, and finding nothing will normally conclude the person is not in custody. These are the five reasons that conclusion is often wrong.
They were arrested somewhere they do not live. Custody follows the place of arrest, not the place of residence. A stop on an interstate, a weekend two states away, a warrant served while travelling — the record sits in a county the family would never think to check.
They have already moved up a layer. Sentencing moves a person out of the county jail and into the state prison system, and the county record can stop describing them at that point. Checking the jail alone answers a question about last month.
The charge is federal. A federal matter never appears in a state prison system at all. No amount of searching the state layer surfaces it, and the search returns clean.
The county publishes nothing. Counties decide independently what to publish. Some post a full roster, some post current custody only, some post nothing. Of 1,408 county jurisdictions in the roster, 1,027 are answering today — and a search that does not say which ones answered is hiding the difference.
The name on the record is not the name you know. Custody records carry legal names, initials and transposed name orders, and a middle name that appears on one system is missing from the next. An exact-string search across one system is the easiest way to miss a person who is plainly there.
State inmate locator: county depth, and whether the state layer exists.
Depth is uneven because counties decide for themselves what to publish, and the statewide layers are separate decisions again. 52 of 52 states and territories carry a statewide prison system; 34 carry a warrant system. These are the largest county contributors.
51 states and territories publish a statewide prison layer. Every state, and what it publishes ›
| State | County jails | Answering | State prison | Warrants |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kentucky | 71 | 65 | Yes | — |
| Montana | 69 | 55 | Yes | — |
| Colorado | 67 | 43 | Yes | Yes |
| Pennsylvania | 66 | 61 | Yes | Yes |
| Texas | 65 | 38 | Yes | Yes |
| California | 60 | 27 | Yes | Yes |
| New York | 60 | 57 | Yes | — |
| Ohio | 52 | 32 | Yes | Yes |
| Indiana | 50 | 40 | Yes | — |
| Idaho | 47 | 32 | Yes | Yes |
| Georgia | 44 | 18 | Yes | — |
| Washington | 42 | 27 | Yes | Yes |
| New Mexico | 41 | 22 | Yes | Yes |
| Oregon | 39 | 31 | Yes | Yes |
Inmate locator results: reading a custody record honestly. A jail booking is an arrest, not a conviction.
Two records that look alike in a list of results carry completely different weight. Getting this wrong follows real people around for years, so it is worth being precise about.
A booking is an arrest
A prison record is post-conviction
Only a disposition says how it ended
Custody changes by the hour and jurisdictions publish on their own schedules. Treat a result as a pointer to the official record rather than a live custody status, and follow the citation on the record before acting on it.
Inmate locator questions. Finding which jail or prison is holding someone.
How do I find out which jail or prison someone is in?
Work out which of the three custody systems is holding them: a county jail, a statewide prison system, or federal custody. Most searches fail because they only cover one of the three. A single search here reaches the county and statewide layers together and tells you which jurisdictions answered, so a blank result is a fact about the search rather than a guess.
How many jurisdictions does one search reach?
The roster holds 1,545 county, state and federal jurisdictions, of which 1,164 are answering today, spread across 52 states and territories. An unscoped search reaches the answering ones in one call; scope it to a state or a named jurisdiction when you already know roughly where to look.
Does a custody record mean the person was convicted?
Not on its own. A county jail record is arrest-stage: it says someone was taken into custody on a date, on the charges written down at booking. Those charges are frequently reduced, dismissed or never filed. A state prison record is post-conviction and does carry that weight. The two look similar in a list of results and mean very different things.
Why did a search return nothing when I know they were arrested?
An empty result has several honest explanations: the person is held in a layer the search did not cover, the county publishes no roster at all, they have been released, or the name on the record differs from the name you searched. Because 1,027 of 1,408 county jurisdictions are answering, every response names what was searched and what did not respond rather than presenting a partial search as an empty one.
Can I look someone up by name across more than one state?
Yes. A name search runs unscoped by default rather than making you pick a state first, which is the point for anyone who does not know where the person was picked up. Narrow by state or jurisdiction once you have a lead, and follow the citation on any record before acting on what it says.
Inmate locator API. The same search as an endpoint, with a citation and a per-jurisdiction status on every response.
$0.15 per call with volume tiers, for teams building custody checks into their own product.