Nebraska

Nebraska’s prisons are run by the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services (NDCS), which operates eight facilities and uses the term incarcerated individual. Where a newly sentenced person starts depends on sex: men are received at the Reception and Treatment Center (RTC) in Lincoln, and women at the Nebraska Correctional Center for Women in York, the state’s only women’s prison. The RTC was formed in 2022 by merging the former Diagnostic and Evaluation Center (DEC) and the Lincoln Correctional Center, so if a record or a mailing address still says “DEC,” it now means the RTC.

Nebraska’s system is among the most overcrowded in the country and has been under a declared overcrowding emergency since 2020, which is part of why people are moved between facilities. A new multi-custody prison is under construction near Lincoln, scheduled to open around 2028, intended to replace the aging Nebraska State Penitentiary rather than add net new capacity. In late 2025, the state’s Work Ethic Camp in McCook stopped operating as a prison — it was converted to a federal immigration-detention facility — and the men held there were transferred to other NDCS prisons.

Nebraska retains the death penalty — the Legislature repealed it in 2015, and voters reinstated it by referendum in 2016. The method is lethal injection; men under a death sentence are held at the Tecumseh State Correctional Institution, while the execution chamber is at the Nebraska State Penitentiary. The state’s most recent execution was in 2018.

Two features of the Nebraska system differ from most states. Personal mail is scanned off-site — letters and photos go to a vendor in Maryland and reach the person as images on a tablet, not on paper. And Nebraska has two independent state offices — the Inspector General of the Nebraska Correctional System and the Ombudsman — that take complaints from families about prison conditions and individual cases. To find someone, use the NDCS locator, searching by name or DCS ID number.

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