Transfers & Finding Someone in Montana (MT DOC)

Finding someone

Montana DOC publishes an online locator called the Correctional Offender Network (ConWeb) at app.mt.gov/conweb. It can be queried by name or by DOC ID number — the identifier the department also calls the AO number, used on mail and visitation forms. The results show the person’s current facility, which is the reliable way to confirm where someone is held. ConWeb is updated weekly rather than in real time.

The AO number is also the identifier senders need for mail and money, so it is worth recording once it is known. Someone held in a county detention center before transfer to a state facility may appear differently or not at all in ConWeb; a person awaiting a DOC bed can often be located through that county’s sheriff’s office instead.

Reception and classification

Newly sentenced people are not sent directly to a long-term assignment. They first pass through reception and assessment, where they are evaluated — medical, mental-health, programming, and security classification — and assigned a custody level before being moved to a permanent placement. Where that happens depends on the person:

• Men enter through the Martz Diagnostic Intake Unit at Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge, the statewide men’s intake and assessment unit. Arrivals are assessed and classified there before transfer to a long-term housing assignment.
• Women enter through Montana Women’s Prison in Billings, which handles women’s reception and classification in addition to general population.

Because reception is the first step, the facility shown in ConWeb during this early period may reflect an intake assignment rather than the person’s eventual long-term placement.

County-jail holds and assessment centers

Montana has a limited number of state prison beds, and the system uses several arrangements to manage that. Understanding them helps explain why a person’s location can change or may not match expectations:

• County detention centers. Some state-sentenced people are held in county jails while they wait for a bed to open at a DOC facility. A person in this situation has been sentenced to state custody but has not yet physically transferred to a state prison.
• Assessment and sanction centers. Montana routes some people through assessment and sanction centers — Passages in Billings and START in Warm Springs — for evaluation, bed-date holds, and disciplinary sanctions before or between facility placements.

A person moving through these steps may appear at a county jail or a center rather than at a state prison, and the assignment can change as a bed becomes available.

Out-of-state placement

To manage population, Montana also places some men out of state. Montana DOC holds a number of men at the Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility, a CoreCivic-operated prison in Tutwiler, Mississippi. A person assigned there is far from Montana, which changes visiting, mail, and phone logistics compared with an in-state facility. ConWeb is still the way to confirm whether someone has been placed out of state.

How transfers work

Montana DOC reclassifies and moves people among its facilities based on custody level, programming, and bed space. After reception, a person is typically assigned to a facility that matches the assigned custody class, and further transfers can follow over the course of a sentence — including moves between state prisons, contracted prisons, county-jail holds, and the out-of-state placement.

Montana DOC does not generally notify families of transfers in advance. For someone tracking where a person is held, ConWeb is the practical tool — checking it again after a suspected move is how a new facility is confirmed.

Facilities no longer holding state-sentenced adults

Information that circulated in earlier years can be out of date. Two facilities that families may have heard of no longer hold state-sentenced adults:

• Pine Hills in Miles City returned to juvenile-only use in 2025. It no longer holds adults in state custody.
• The state’s contract for the Great Falls / Cascade County regional prison ended in 2021. That facility no longer holds state-sentenced adults.

A person who was associated with one of these facilities under older information now appears in ConWeb at a different location. Searching by name or AO number will show the current facility regardless.

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 scheduled in advance, but the days, hours, scheduling method, and contact level depend on the facility. Montana does not use a single statewide visit scheduler — the state prisons schedule online through one vendor, while the contracted and out-of-state prisons run their own processes. A move to a different facility can therefore change when and how visits happen, so confirm the arrangements at the current location after a transfer. See Visiting in Montana.

Verify Before Acting

For the general, nationwide overview of this topic, see the national guide: Know Your Rights.