A state prison inmate locator would allow a searcher to find an inmate who is within a particular state’s prison system. A state prison inmate search service would inherently have to be a different individual service for each state, as each state has a separate Department of Corrections and would thus have a separate state prison system. 

There are some state prison inmate locator services which serve as aggregates of the different state prison inmate search services available from each state, thereby allowing a search of all states from one website, but these services are sometimes suspect and not necessarily as effective as simply using the state prison inmate locator for that particular state.

A state prison inmate search service will generally allow searchers to look for an inmate using several different pieces of information, including name, birth date, and information about that inmate’s status within the Department of Corrections, such as that individual’s department ID number. Different states may allow for slightly different search criteria, particularly as different states might have different ID systems set in place. 

Some state prison inmate search services might provide additional information as well, such as the parole status of an inmate, though this varies from service to service. Additionally, the state prison inmate locator service for a particularly populous state might be updated more frequently, whereas a smaller state’s state prison inmate search service might be updated less frequently, thus either accordingly increasing the utility of that service or decreasing the utility. 

The federal inmate locator is a service offered up by the Federal Bureau of Prisons which allows for a searcher to find and identify any inmates within the federal prison system. The federal inmate search service is offered up by the Federal Bureau of Prisons on its website, so it is easily accessible to all individuals. 

The federal prison inmate locator ensures that even though an inmate enters into the federal prison system, he or she will not be lost into the system, as might have happened were information less accessible. Furthermore, because of the nature of the federal prison system, a federal prison inmate locator is all the more necessary, as it ensures that even if a prisoner is sent to a prison far outside of that prisoner’s original state, then he or she may be located through the federal inmate search. Because of the nature of the federal prison system, it is sometimes more difficult to find an inmate through some of the methods which might be available at the county or even state level, and as such, a federal inmate locator is an important tool.

The federal prison inmate locator allows for searchers to find inmates who have been incarcerated from 1982 onward. It allows searchers to attempt to find an inmate either by the ID number associated with the inmate, or by the information of the inmate including name, sex, age, and race.