The Iowa Department of Corrections (IDOC) is in charge of nine facilities holding around 8,200 people. It is also in charge of about 30,800 people living in the community correctional facilities. The department maintains a record of all its inmates' information and ensures it is available for public access through the IDOC offender search database.
The Iowa Public Information Board allows you to find the inmate under this database, which is searchable by offender name or IDOC-issued number. When utilizing the name search option, you must fill in the offender's first and last name with an optional middle name.
Since inmates may have similar names, you may add some information to help reduce the search result. For instance, you can add the inmate's date of birth, sex, offense committed, the county where the offense was committed, and charges or sentencing period.
How to find inmates in the Iowa County Jails
There are 96 county jails across 99 counties that incarcerate around 5,000 inmates. Most of these inmates are pretrial and short-term inmates for non-violent offenses, usually less than a year. The county sheriff's department maintains these jails.
Iowa county jails are required by law to ensure that they keep inmate records either on an online database or manually. Most of these jails, however, maintain an inmate roster, some of which are searchable by offender's name or dates of incarceration or arrest. In contrast, others maintain a list of the names arranged alphabetically. However, to access their records, you must request them from the jail or the sheriff's office.
In cases where the jail does not have an online inmate roster, you can call the jail administration or the county sheriff's department using the contact information on the jail or sheriff's office website.
Inmate Search via Third-Party Websites
The Iowa FOIA allows the general public to access inmates' records kept by various government agencies using privately owned websites. These websites allow interested parties to make a quick inmate search by the offender's name.
On the other hand, due to the bulkiness of many search results, these websites require the searcher to provide additional information such as the offender's date of birth, height, race, gender, sex, eye and hair color, visible tattoos and scars, date of incarceration or arrest, charges or county or incarceration or arrest.
With that information, the website may provide a more accurate search. Some of these websites are free, whereas others require interested individuals to pay service fees. However, you should be aware that these websites are privately owned and have no affiliations with any government agency. In return, the information on these websites is bound to change, rendering the ones on these websites outdated. Others charge expensively for services that would be cheaper or free.
Iowa VINELink
You can also find inmates in Iowa using VINELink. This is a free national resource for all victims of crime. To gain access to inmate records, you must register with VINELink and receive updates on your offender. You may receive notifications online, via phone, or by email.
