Maryland Inmate Search

All correctional departments must maintain an inmate records database for the inmates in their care. This includes state prisons, federal facilities, and county jails. In addition, they are supposed to provide access to these records to citizens upon request under the Maryland Public Information Act. These records help interested individuals find inmates incarcerated across correctional facilities in the state.  

Finding inmates in Maryland State Prisons 

The Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services (DPS&CS) operates 24 correctional facilities, Patuxent Institution, the Baltimore Pretrial Complex, the Central Booking and Intake Center, and the Youth Detention Center.  

You can find any inmate in these facilities by searching the Maryland Inmate Locator database. You can locate your inmate using their official first and last names. If you cannot find your inmate, you can contact DPS&CS headquarters and request that they search on your behalf. 

You can also request the inmate's court records, as they will contain the case verdict and sentencing, including the facility where they were sentenced to serve time.  

Finding inmates in the Maryland County Jails  

The state also operates a jail system comprised of 30 county jails in 23 counties run by the county sheriff's office. These prisons accommodate around 12,100 inmates, primarily for minor, non-violent offenses requiring less than a year. Furthermore, the average stay of these inmates is three to eight months. These county jails also house pretrial inmates awaiting court verdicts in court.  

Using the inmate roster usually available on the county sheriff's correctional division website, you can find such inmates. Most jails will have an alphabetical list of the offenders in their care. In contrast, some will have a searchable database where you can locate your inmate by name, date of incarceration, or arrest.  

As these prisons have many ins and outs in terms of inmates, finding a single inmate may be difficult. This is because the inmate roster is not updated as the ins and outs happen but in intervals of maybe 24 or 36 hours, depending on the prison staff and funds. In that case, you can call your local county sheriff's department or jail administration by phone, email or in person and request to know about the whereabouts of your inmate.  

Finding inmates in the federal facility in Cumberland 

Maryland also has one federal prison, the Federal Correctional Institution, Cumberland, a medium-security prison for male offenders. The Mid-Atlantic Regional Office of the Bureau of prisons runs the facility.  

When female offenders are incarcerated for violating federal laws, they are housed in an out-of-state program in another federal facility outside Maryland. You can locate all these federal inmates using the federal inmate locator system on the official Bureau of Prisons Website.  

The inmate locator system will require you to provide the inmate's official first and last name, and you can add the middle name to reduce the search results. You can also find the federal inmate using their federal inmate number, which may be DCDC, INS, BOP-register or FBI inmate numbers.