How to find out if someone is in jail or in federal prison?
A few years ago it might have been a near impossible task to find someone who was in federal prison unless you had a good idea of where they were before you began. I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised when I had need to find someone recently. It was a lot easier than I thought it would be and you can get a lot of the information for free. If you can’t find them using free methods or you want to dig a bit deeper into the persons background or criminal record then this is easy to do too if you don’t mind paying the small fee involved. I found that it was more than worth it for the wealth of information that I found out.
Step 1: Try the BOP Federal Inmate Lookup and USA.gov State Corrections Departments search
If the person you are looking for is in a federal prison then you should be able to look them up on the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) web site. at www.bop.gov. The site provides a searchable inmates listing which isn’t too difficult to use. It claims to list all federal inmates since 1982.
To use the free inmate locator type in the details of the person that you’re looking for and click the button to see an inmates listing together with the names of the prisons where each person is being held. If they’re still being held in prison the list will also give you a link to the facilities web site. When you do this the site might give you a long list of inmates unless the person you’re searching for has a particularly unusual name. If you get a long list then you need to somehow filter the list to find which one, if any, of the inmates is the person that you are looking for. This can be harder than it sounds.
If you don’t find the person that you are looking for on the federal BOP site it might be that they are being held in a State Correction facility and not a federal one. If this is the case then you can search for them up on the answers.usa.gov web site. The problem is that you either have to know exactly where they might be held or you have to do a search on about 37 different web sites. This is possible but it might take you some time. Also not all the correctional facilities publish their records online.
Step 2: Fine tune your search by getting some background information
When you’ve done your searches on the free sites above and you’ve filtered your results by sex, race and age you might still be left with several names on the inmates listing and you’re not sure which one of them, if any of them at all, is the person that you’re looking for. If this happens then you need to get more background information on them.
If you are lucky then you won’t need to look any further than the BOP and state web sites. They are free to use and you may well find exactly what you are looking for. If you don’t find the person that you are looking for or you want to get a background check on them to find out more about their criminal record or other information then you can use a public records web site to find what you need. This web site uses public records from all over the country and gives you easy access to them. Not only will it make it easier for you to find someone in prison, it will also give you access to as much information on them that you could want.
Free Inmate Locator: Using The federal Inmate Locator Web Site
Author: Steve Gee