As a part of any comprehensive criminal records check, a person should always check into the history of the individual in question’s inmate history. As each jurisdiction maintains an inmate list according to which inmates are doing or have don’t time in their respective jurisdictional jails and prisons, it is necessary to understand what how these inventories correspond to the criminal justice system, as well as how this impacts your inmate search.
First off, for the novice seeker of criminal background information and inmate searches, it is necessary to understand what a catalog of this kind is. This inventory is basically a database of inmates who have served time or are currently serving time in a particular jurisdiction prison. The helpful thing about these databases is that they offer full names of the inmates, ages, races, time served, as well as release dates-at the minimum-which can all prove very useful when cross-referenced with criminal records information found at the jurisdictional courts and information repositories.
Databases of this kind come in a variety of kinds according to the four jurisdictions that order the criminal justice system. There is an inmate roster for municipal jails, county jails, state prisons, and federal prisons. Minor crimes committed are typically handled at the municipal level; felonies and misdemeanors committed are processed at the state county prisons, and federal crimes are processed at the federal level. So, depending on what kind of crime a criminal is charged for will determine what court he/she is processed at; and if convicted and sentenced to incarceration, what type of incarceration facility they will serve time at. This said, this ordering of criminal justice extends to what kind of inmate roster a prisoner may be detailed in.
With this in mind, as regards jurisdiction, we take a closer look at how to actually find these databases of information for search. If you are looking for information on criminals who have committed minor municipal crimes, visiting the sheriff’s office in that particular jurisdiction will most often yield the information you seek, though some municipalities have online inventories of prisoners. For incarcerated inmates that have been jailed for county and/or state mandated crimes, locating the online government website of that particular state or county is your first step. Most all states have online prisoner locators to find the prisoners by name and location. County criminals-though some have online databases or inmate rosters can be found in online state government websites as well, since the two process criminals of much the same nature. Lastly, in order to find a database of federal criminals, the best place to search for this information is at the federal government’s website-the Bureau of Prisons. Within this site, and aside from general and specific prison system information that you may find helpful, you will find an online prisoner locator which references all criminals incarcerated of federal crimes-since 1982. If you are seeking information on an incarcerated criminal who may have served time previous to this year, it is still possible to locate this information. You can do so, by inquiring by mail to the address located on the BOP website with as many details regarding the individual and their incarceration as possible.