For persons held in custody by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (“CDCR”):
CDCR inmate locator (for telephone access, call 916-445-6713)
For persons held in custody at a county jail:
Vine (comprehensive search engine for all county jails)
Contra Costa County inmate search
Del Norte County inmate search
Mendocino County – call 707-463-4086
San Francisco County inmate search
For youths held in custody by the Division of Juvenile Justice (“DJJ”) or at a county juvenile facility:
The DJJ currently runs four facilities where youths may be held in custody:
N.A. Chaderjian Youth Correctional Facility
O.H. Close Youth Correctional Facility
Pine Grove Youth Conservation Camp
Ventura Youth Correctional Facility
The telephone number for DJJ visiting information is 866-801-4977.
Youths may also be held in custody at the county level at the juvenile hall or similar facility for the given county.
There is no inmate locator or similar online system for identifying where a youth is being held. If you don’t know where a youth is being held, try asking the youth’s juvenile court attorney, who will generally have this information.
For persons committed to a Department of State Hospitals facility:
There are five facilities in the state hospital system: Atascadero State Hospital, Coalinga State Hospital, Metropolitan State Hospital, Napa State Hospital, and Patton State Hospital.
There is no inmate locator or similar online system for identifying which hospital a person is located in. If you don’t know which hospital a person is located in, try asking the person’s trial attorney, who will generally have this information.
Once you know which hospital a person is located in, you can contact the person using the contact information listed on the “Family and Friend Resources” webpage for each hospital:
To communicate with a person by telephone, try contacting the person by mail and asking them to provide you with the direct phone number for their unit.
For persons held in custody by the Federal Bureau of Prisons:
Federal Bureau of Prisons inmate locator
For persons held in custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”):
An individual in immigration custody may be held in an ICE facility, private detention center, or county jail, and may have been transported out of state. The best way to locate an individual in immigration custody is to search ICE’s online locator by the individual’s A-number (“Alien Registration Number”) and country of birth. The online locator requires the A-number to be 9 digits; if the A-number has only 8 digits, add a zero before the number.
If the individual’s A-number is unknown, it is possible to search by biographical information. However, this search requires that the individual’s first and last names be entered exactly as they appear in ICE’s system.
Note that the online locator is not always up to date – for example, an individual’s information remains available for up to 60 days after they are released – and will not display information for minors.