Transfers & Finding Someone in Alaska (AK DOC)
How to find someone in Alaska custody through VINELink, how intake works in a unified jail-and-prison system with no single reception center, the four custody levels, and what transfers mean for visiting.
Finding someone
Alaska does not run a separate DOC offender-lookup website. The official tool is VINELink, the statewide victim and offender notification service: open vinelink.com, select Alaska as the state, and search by name. The same information is available by phone at 1-800-247-9763.
VINELink can also register a phone number or email for notification when a person’s custody status changes. Someone held only briefly in a small community jail under contract, or awaiting transfer, may not always appear the way a longer-term search would, so checking again later — or calling the AK DOC central office at 907-334-2381 — can confirm a current location.
Intake in a unified system
Alaska is one of a small number of states with a unified corrections system: the Department of Corrections runs both pretrial detention and the facilities that hold sentenced people, because Alaska has no county jail system. Most of its correctional centers hold both unsentenced and sentenced people in the same facility.
One practical consequence is that there is no single dedicated reception center. Instead, a person enters custody at the facility nearest the place of arrest through the booking process, which includes:
- A custody-level and housing assessment, and
- A medical and mental-health screening by DOC medical staff.
During booking, a person may call an attorney and a relative or friend, and may post bail before being moved to a housing unit.
Classification and the four custody levels
After booking, classification assigns a custody level used to decide where a person is housed. Alaska uses four custody levels:
- Community
- Minimum
- Medium
- Close
The aim is to place each person at the least restrictive level consistent with their assessed risk and needs. Classification is reviewed yearly, so a person’s custody level — and the facility that matches it — can change over time.
Where people are housed
People are housed and transferred according to classification and bed space rather than a fixed routing, but some general patterns hold:
- Maximum- and close-custody men typically go to Spring Creek Correctional Center in Seward — the state’s only maximum-security prison — and to the large medium-security Goose Creek Correctional Center at Point MacKenzie.
- All women in DOC custody are concentrated at the Hiland Mountain Correctional Center in Eagle River, the state’s dedicated women’s facility, which holds all custody levels.
- The Anchorage Correctional Complex is the main booking and intake point for the Anchorage region.
Because intake is tied to where a person was arrested, the facility shown in VINELink early on may reflect the booking location rather than a longer-term assignment.
How transfers work
AK DOC reclassifies and moves people among its facilities based on custody level, programming, and available beds. A person may be moved after classification, after a yearly review, or when bed space requires it, and further transfers can follow over the course of a sentence.
AK DOC does not generally notify families of transfers in advance. For anyone tracking where a person is held, VINELink is the practical tool — checking it again after a suspected move, or registering for notifications, is how a new facility is confirmed.
Alaska currently holds all of its prisoners in state. The state ended its earlier use of out-of-state private prisons after Goose Creek opened in 2012, so a transfer means a move to another Alaska facility rather than to another state.
What a transfer means for visiting
A transfer can change visiting logistics. Every visitor must be on the person’s approved visitor list, and visits are arranged per facility — Alaska has no statewide online scheduler, and several facilities take appointments. The days, hours, and contact level depend on the facility and the person’s classification, so a move can change when and how visits happen.
Distance is a larger factor in Alaska than in most states: several facilities are in remote communities reachable mainly by plane, and a transfer can move a person far closer to or farther from family. The DOC’s case-by-case special visit provision exists in part for families traveling long distances. After a transfer, confirm the visiting schedule and status at the current facility. See Visiting in Alaska.
Verify Before Acting
Sources
This page is compiled from the following publicly available sources. Policies change without notice — confirm current details with the facility before relying on them.