Alabama

The Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) runs about 14 major state prisons (plus work centers and community facilities). About 21,000 people are physically in its state prisons, and thousands more state-sentenced people are held in county jails waiting for a prison bed. The agency uses the term inmate.

The line between a state prison and a county jail is the offense and sentence. People convicted of felonies and serving longer sentences go to ADOC; pretrial detention and short (usually misdemeanor) sentences are served in a county jail. But because Alabama’s prisons are crowded, a person sentenced to ADOC often remains physically in the county jail past the usual transfer window — so a newly sentenced person may still be in the county jail, under ADOC’s authority, for some time.

Alabama’s men’s prisons are the subject of a U.S. Department of Justice lawsuit, filed in 2020, alleging that conditions violate the Constitution because of violence, overcrowding, and understaffing; the case is in litigation. The state is also building large new men’s prisons — the Governor Kay Ivey Correctional Complex in Elmore County and a planned second facility in Escambia County — neither of which is open yet.

Newly sentenced people are processed at a reception center first — men at Kilby Correctional Facility near Montgomery, and women at the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka — before being assigned to a permanent prison, so the facility shown in the inmate search may change within weeks. Tutwiler is Alabama’s only women’s prison; the maximum-security men’s prisons include Donaldson (Bessemer), St. Clair (Springville), and Holman (Atmore, which holds the death row and execution chamber), and Limestone (Harvest) is the largest.

To find where someone is held, search the ADOC Inmate Search by name or AIS number (the Alabama Institutional Serial number). Alabama also runs AlaVINE for custody and release alerts. If a person does not appear in the ADOC search, they may still be in a county jail — contact that county.

Use the guides below for the statewide rules at ADOC prisons, or go straight to a specific facility.