Record Search

Searching for inmate records has always been a difficult and time-consuming task for anyone who wants to make even the mundane searches. However, for the myriad of reasons someone will want to do an inmate record search to get information about inmates, the internet has made it more simplified and straightforward than simply showing up at prisons to ask for what you need. There are numerous facilities where inmates can be held with different protocols and red-tape to cut through in accessing information, even if the records requested are public records.

So if you want to check a person in a correctional facility, many of these searches can be done online leading to a more productive search as the search platforms can help look up someone in jail fast and with less stress. In the article on how to look up someone in jail Radaris covers the steps to be made, yet before digging into our search let’s consider why it’s important.

When inmate record search is important?

  • Employment process: It is important to be able to search for people in prison or who have been in prison when hiring employees. Employers use this when doing background searches for potential employees. Companies often want to do extensive searches that include criminal records and prison records which can tell if someone had been in prison within a timeframe. 
  • Searching for family members: Also, people searching for relatives or friends can also use this search to locate people especially when they cannot find them in other databases. The search can be used when organizing a prison visit for a family too. 
  • Election/Selection: When individuals are to be appointed or elected to positions, especially for public posts, background checks are a part of the process and this involves criminal records, arrest records, and inmate searches. 

Ways to look up someone in jail

Persons who are held in a prison facility are usually people who have been charged with a crime and are awaiting trial or those who have been already convicted of a crime and have to wait in prison till their sentence is over. To find inmate records, the first thing to determine before you begin the search is what type of facility the person is incarcerated in. It might be a juvenile detention center, prison, jail, or other correctional facilities, local, state, or federal.

Finding an inmate in Federal Prison

The Federal Bureau of Prisons usually referred to as a BOP, consists of more than 200,000 offenders who had contravened federal laws with over 119 prison institutions. Most of the inmates are kept in these federal facilities while others are contracted to private facilities or with states for incarceration. BOP has a large database that contains records of inmates from 1982 to date and it is easier to find people in prison with the Federal inmate Locator. 

To use the locator you need to provide the individual’s first name, last name, middle name, age, race, and gender. If you have the person’s inmate number you can use this to find people in prison and the arrest records. The tool does not just locate the inmate but also provides additional information about the individual and the facility the person is being held at.

Websites for people search

Inmate records are vast but are also public and this information can be gotten from different platforms that help make it easier to get it. These search tools comb through publicly available information and distil the information needed with frequently updated data sourced from many databases. The websites often contain different features such as phone lookup, a background check that helps make the inmate record search more wholesome and in-depth.

Radaris is one of those tools that have several features that help make your search easier and combines these features which will allow you to do a multilevel search after which the information that matches your search is displayed and you can find the best possible match. You might need to search more than once to allow for time in updating the database after someone is arrested or incarcerated which can take a few days to reflect. When you get a match for the record you’re searching for, you can get the basic information of the match for free or pay some fee for more information.