Find and Access California Prison Inmate Information

You may wish to obtain information on an inmate who is incarcerated in a California prison, as a victim of the inmate or otherwise. In such cases, you can access information on the inmates held in California prisons; check http://www.cdcr.ca.gov for more details.

Locating an Inmate in a California Prison

There are several methods of locating a prison inmate within the jurisdiction of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. You can call the Identification Unit at 916-445-6713, Monday through Friday, from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. The Unit will ask for the full name of the inmate you are looking for and his or her date of birth, or the inmate's CDC identification number. The Identification Unit is only able to provide you with the present CDC identification number of an inmate (if you do not know it already) and his or her current location; the Unit cannot provide you with an inmate's future release date. You can also fax your inquiry to the Identification Unit at 916-322-0500.

You can easily obtain information on a California inmate using the online inmate locator tool. To use this service, visit http://www.ca.gov/OS_Government_http://www.peoplepublicrecords.org/locator.html. The website offers the option to search a specific county. You will also find links to the websites of the state correctional facilities and federal prisons, which can be helpful should you need to search for inmates held in those facilities. You can base your search on the name of the individual or on other details such as date of birth and sex.

Contacting a California Prison Inmate

It is possible to contact a friend or family member being held in a California prison by postal mail. Any letters sent to an inmate will be opened and inspected for contraband before being forwarded to the inmate.

The mailing address on the envelope should have complete information, including the full name of the inmate, the name of the institution, city, zip code, and P.O. Box number. If you do not know where an inmate is incarcerated, you can contact the ID Warrants Unit of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation by calling 916-445-6713. If you are searching for an inmate who shares his or her name with another inmate, you will be required to provide the date of birth.

You can also contact a prison inmate via telephone. A majority of the inmates have access to telephones and have the freedom to initiate outgoing collect calls. You can provide a telephone number to the inmate where he or she can call you; calls initiated by inmates are limited to 15 minutes.

The information accessible from the online inmate locator for each county is the most recent information available to the sheriff's office, and the websites are updated regularly to ensure accuracy. The information might change frequently due to the inmates moving through the judicial process.

If you cannot find an individual's records, and you know for certain that he or she is an inmate, this occurrence may be due to the exemptions provided under Government Code Section 6254(f). In such a case, you can contact the local jurisdiction for further information on a particular California prison inmate. The online inmate locator may not be able to provide information on offenders who have been recently admitted into prison or transferred between state prisons within seven days.