How to Search Ohio Inmate Records
The state prison of Ohio is operated by Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections, which incarcerates the adult felony criminals of the state. The county jails are operated by the governments of respective counties, and they house the convicts that have been sentenced for misdemeanors or lesser crimes.
If you are looking for an Ohio inmate, conducting the search can be easier if you know about the kind of offense for which the person had been imprisoned. Extracting information from the website of Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections is not much of a difficult task. You can start the search by visiting their website at http://www.drc.state.oh.us/OffenderSearch/Search.aspx. Whether the inmate you are looking for is presently incarcerated or is under supervision, you can type in the required fields to get the essential information on him or her.
Search Techniques
There are three search techniques. They are:
1. Search through first and last names,
2. Search through the county where the crime had been committed, or
3. Search through the county of residence.
However, the last technique would yield the results of those Ohio inmates who are under APA supervision, that are on parole, controlled release, etc. or the inmates who are tagged as Violators at Large (VAL). They are the offenders who have violated the APA supervision laws.
Helpful Facts about Conducting Searches
If you are conducting the search with offender numbers, there are certain facts that you should remember. The number of male offenders have 6 digits, while female offenders have five-digit numbers.
For the numbers of female offenders, add a 0 prior to the digits. For example, if the number is 12321, the number entered by you should be 012321. There are no hyphens, commas, or spaces between. Add the alphabetical prefix properly, or, otherwise, you will get the details of some other inmate. This page also gives option to let you know the information of the next hearing date of the parole board. In this case, you must enter the date in YYYYMM pattern. For example, if the date is November 2009, you will enter 200911.
At times, you may find it difficult to conduct the search. It is due to the periodic maintenance break during which the database is refreshed and updated. If you return after an hour two, you will find that the search is back in working order.
If you know the institution of incarceration, you can also carry out the search for Ohio inmates by sending request in writing to the respective institution. The address of these facilities can be obtained from the link http://www.drc.ohio.gov/web/prisprog.htm, which would take you to the page of state map. You can click on the region and get the address of the specific institution. Though you would not get information on the person you are looking for, you will get contact information and other details, like visiting hours, modes of correspondence, and the facilities provided.
Intake Centers and Visitation Procedures
The intake of inmates in Ohio follows a particular rule. The convicts who have been sentenced to Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections of Ohio are usually processed through any one of the three designated centers. This procedure depends upon the county where the crime had been committed and/or gender of the convict.
There is the Ohio Reformatory for Women, located in Marysville, which takes care of the procedure to allocate the female inmates sentenced for imprisonment under DRC. The rest are assigned to the remaining two facilities, according to the county of commitment. The offenders from twenty-five counties in north Ohio are the responsibilities of the Lorraine Correctional Institution. The remaining male inmates, hailing from the rest of the sixty-three counties, are processed via the Correctional Reception Center in Orient.
The visiting hours of each institution may differ from another. To visit an inmate, it is necessary to call the specific facility to know about their visiting hours.
There are specific rules to meet an inmate is prison. First of all, it is the responsibility of the inmate to add their visitors to the list of guests. The list can include up to 15 persons, which would exclude their recorded attorney, clergy of record, or a minor, who is by law under 18. The visitor would require to fill out a form to request a visit. This form can be downloaded at http://www.drc.ohio.gov/web/Forms/VisitingPacket.pdf. There is a separate form that would be required to fill out if the visitor would like to bring a minor with them. This form can also be downloaded from http://www.drc.ohio.gov/web/Forms/DRC4371.pdf.
Ohio inmates can be contacted by writing letters through the mail service, provided by United States Postal Service only. Inmates are not allowed to access Internet. Thus, they can neither receive nor send emails. The letters written to the inmates should be addressed to the proper facility where he or she has been incarcerated, along with name and their number. If you don’t know the number of the inmate, you can call (614) 752-1076 to receive it or go to the offender search section of the website. These letters are read and delivered only after officials have approved of the content.
The inmates in Ohio have access to the telephone, but they have access with certain restrictions. The calls may be monitored and/or recorded for security reasons. Also, the prisoners under discipline, security, or any other control can access the telephone for emergency situations only and only after getting approval from the warden.
Additionally, there are certain rules specific to each individual institution. To know more about them, you will need to call their office or can visit their site at http://www.drc.ohio.gov/web/prisprog.htm.
The website of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction is capable of providing you with all necessary details that are crucial to conduct a search of Ohio inmates. Where there is no online facility to extract the information, the contact address of that particular facility is provided by request through the mail.
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