Virginia Inmate Search
Table of Contents
How Are Inmate Records in Virginia Created and Stored?
Virginia inmate records originate when someone is arrested by local law enforcement. The police or Sheriff’s Office records the arrest on a RAP sheet which contains the offender’s name, address, physical description, mugshot, and crime details. After that, everything that takes place in the inmate’s life is recorded and the file updated. The Virginia Department of Corrections is the government agency in charge of keeping, storing, and updating inmate records. They maintain a massive database of information kept online and searchable so that the public can perform a Virginia inmate search anytime.
How to Perform a Virginia Inmate Locator?
Finding an inmate in a Virginia jail or prison is pretty straightforward. The process for each is different, however. Looking for someone in a Virginia state prison is perhaps a bit easier because the Virginia Department of Corrections has an inmate locator right on their website. Follow the instructions below to look up someone incarcerated in a Virginia state prison:
- Visit the Virginia Department of Corrections website .
- From the main menu, choose “General Public” and then from the drop-down, select “Offender Locator.”
- The page that displays gives you the option of searching by name or offender ID.
- There is also an area to enter optional information like alias, location, release date, age, gender, and race. This criterion helps to narrow things down. If you use the name, you must enter both first and last names.
- Hit the “Locate” button after entering your information.
- The results will display below in boxed format. They contain the offender’s name, alias, age, race, gender, offender ID, release date, and the facility where they are being held.
- There is a link on each one so friends and family can send that inmate money.
Anyone looking for criminal records, arrests, warrants, incarcerations, court cases, or inmate records could also try out the Infotracer system. They have over 2 million records from various public records sources.
What Does Virginia’s Prison System Look Like?
The Virginia prisons system has a few different types of facilities and programs to help rehabilitate offenders and reduce recidivism. Not only does Virginia have a lot of state prisons, but they also have federal prisons, juvenile detention for youth offenders, and quite a few local jails. The state-run facilities are overseen and managed by the Virginia Department of Corrections and Director, Harold W. Clarke. The entire prisons system in Virginia consists of:
41 State Prisons- 2 Federal Prisons
- 1 Juvenile Detention Facility
- 69 County Jails
Did you Know?
- 0.45% of people in Virginia are under correctional control, from which 60,821 are on probation, and 1,650 are on parole.
- Every year, about 9,175 people walk out of prison gates in Virginia, but people go to jail 1.1 times more each year
- 92% of prison inmates in Virginia are male, 8% female.
- From 1979–80 to 2012–13, state and local government expenditures on corrections in Virginia increased by 346 percent (from $487,526,616 to $2,174,796,000).
- Virginia has 59 facilities under state or federal authority that provided educational programs to inmates, from which only 23 provided College courses.
Types of Jails and Prisons in Virginia
The state of Virginia has forty-one state prisons. These facilities hold felons who have broken state laws and were sentenced in a court of law to confinement for long sentences. They are overseen and managed by the Virginia Department of Corrections. Additionally, the federal government has two federal prison facilities in the state holding federal inmates who broke federal laws while in Virginia. Virginia has one juvenile detention facility which is managed by the Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice, and this facility holds youth offenders under the age of 18. Many of Virginia’s counties have local jails which are run by local law enforcement.