Tennessee Inmate Search

Tennessee residents can access inmate records upon request as they are made public under the TN Public Records Act. You do not need to provide a legitimate reason to access these records, provided you intend to refrain from doing anything malicious with them. You access the records from various government entities that provide access to the state or county public records. You can utilize these records to find any inmate in Tennessee.

How to find an inmate in the TN State Prison System

The Tennessee State Prison System comprises 14 state prisons distributed across the state. Four of these departments are operated privately by the CoreCivic, while the rest ten are operated by the TN Department of Corrections. This department also supervises the individuals on community supervision release, comprising around 62,000 probationers and 11,000 parolees. 

To find incarcerated inmates in these facilities, you must visit the TN DOC's official website. The website has a FOIL-Offender Search database with information about all state prisoners in the state prison systems. You can search the databases by prisoner's names or use the DOC-issued ID. 

On the other hand, you can visit the CoreCivic website and find out how to contact the organization. You can call the organization and request that they search on your behalf.

How to find an inmate in the TN Federal Prison System

There is also one federal prison and one camp managed by the Mid-Atlantic Regional Office of the Bureau of Prisons. These two facilities have a combined population of roughly 1,000 inmates. You must access the inmate locator tool on the official Bureau of Prisons website to locate these inmates. 

The locator tool is searchable in two ways:

Name option, where you must indicate the correct inmate's full name. You can also add a middle name to reduce the possibility of a vast search result.

Number option. On this option, however, you need to specify which number you need to fill in. This is because there are four types of number searches on the BOP inmate locator. They include the following;

• Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS-number)
• Bureau of Prisons Register Number (BOP)
• District of Columbia Department of Correction Number (DCDC)
• Federal Bureau of Investigations Number (BOP)

How to find an inmate in the TN County Prison System

TN also runs a county jail system maintained by the local county sheriff's departments. It has 112 county jails distributed across 95 counties. Most inmates in these facilities have an incarceration period of less than a year. However, most inmates in these jails are pretrial inmates awaiting court dates and verdicts. 

To locate an inmate in these facilities, you need to visit the local county jail website, if they have one, to access the jail records. You can also access the jail records via the county sheriff's website. You can try to find the inmate roster, which usually contains a list of inmates currently in the facility. 

You can view the inmate roster by the names of the offenders in the jail, their incarceration dates, or their arrest dates in case the sheriff's department arrested them. If you cannot find the inmate roster or jail records, you can contact the county sheriff's department and request access. You could also visit the jail or the office in person and request access.

How to find inmates using a third-party website

You can also access inmate records via third-party websites. The cons of using this method are that some websites charge expensively, while others are outdated. Besides, they are not affiliated with any government entity.