Indiana

The Indiana Department of Correction (IDOC) runs the state’s prison system — 18 adult prisons holding roughly 25,000 people. Sixteen are operated directly by IDOC, and two are operated by a private company, the GEO Group, under contract with the state: the New Castle Correctional Facility and the Heritage Trail Correctional Facility. IDOC also houses some sentenced people in county jails under contract. IDOC’s materials generally use the words offender and inmate; this site uses neutral terms.

Where a person is held turns first on the sentence. A person sentenced to state time is held in an IDOC prison; people awaiting trial or serving shorter sentences are held in a county jail run by one of Indiana’s 92 counties, which sets its own visiting, mail, and phone rules and is not listed in the state’s offender locator.

Newly committed people are processed at a reception and diagnostic center first — men at the Reception-Diagnostic Center in Plainfield, and women at the Rockville Correctional Facility — for classification before transfer to a permanent prison, so the prison shown in the locator may change. Indiana has an active death penalty and resumed executions in December 2024 after a long pause: men under a death sentence are held at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, which also houses the state’s execution chamber, and a woman under a death sentence would be held at the Indiana Women’s Prison in Indianapolis (no women are currently under an Indiana death sentence).

To find where someone is held, use the state’s offender locator (the Indiana Incarcerated Database Search) by name or offender number; it covers people in IDOC custody, not county-jail detainees. If a person is not listed, they may be in a county jail — search that county’s roster. Unlike some states, Indiana photocopies incoming personal mail at each prison’s own mailroom rather than through an off-site vendor (see the mail guide). Independent oversight is provided by the Indiana Ombudsman Bureau, which reviews complaints separately from IDOC. Use the guides below for the statewide rules at Indiana prisons, or go straight to a specific facility.