Find someone in custody

Is there one national list of everyone in custody?

There is no single national list of everyone in custody. There are three separate systems that do not share records: county and city jails, the federal system, and immigration. A person can be booked into one and moved to another within a day, and the old system will stop showing them while the new one has not started yet.

That gap is why families call around for two days and get nowhere. Establish which system first, then where. If you are not sure, call us at (800) 299-9981 and we will check all three at once.

How long before someone shows up in a search?

After an arrest or an immigration pickup, booking and transport take time. It can be several hours, sometimes longer than a day, before a person appears in any search system. If you cannot find them right away that does not mean something has gone wrong. Try again later, or let us keep checking for you.

How do I find someone in ICE custody?

People detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement are tracked federally, not by the county jail, even if they were first arrested locally.

• Search: ICE Online Detainee Locator System
• You need either the person's A-number (the alien registration number immigration assigns, an A followed by nine digits) and country of birth, or their full name, country of birth, and date of birth.
• Spell the name exactly as the government would have entered it. Try both surnames, and try them in each order.
• People under 18 do not appear in this system. Neither does anyone released more than 60 days ago.

How do I find someone in federal custody?

If the case is in United States District Court, the person may be held by the U.S. Marshals Service in a contracted local jail before sentencing, and only later appear in the Bureau of Prisons system.

• Search: Federal Bureau of Prisons Inmate Locator
• Covers federal inmates from 1982 to the present. It will often not show someone who was arrested this week.
• This is the gap we are most often called about. Call us and we will find the holding facility.

How do I find someone in a county or city jail?

Each county runs its own search, and the quality varies enormously. These are the systems for the two states we work in most.

Nevada

• Clark County Detention Center (CCDC), the main jail for Las Vegas Metro arrests. Facility phone (702) 671-3900.
• Henderson Detention Center. Facility phone (702) 267-5245.
• North Las Vegas Community Correctional Center. Facility phone (702) 633-1400.

California

• Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department Inmate Information Center, covering the largest jail system in the country. Booking information line (213) 473-6100.
• San Diego County Sheriff, Who's In Jail.
• Other counties run their own. Give us the county and we will find the right one.

Be careful with search results that look official but are not. Several of the top-ranking "county inmate locator" sites are advertising fronts that copy a sheriff's branding. Use the links above, or use us.

Anywhere else in the country

We are not limited to Nevada and California. Those are simply where most of our calls come from. If your person was picked up in another state, we will find them there.