Oregon

The Oregon Department of Corrections (ODOC) runs the state’s 12 state prisons and holds about 12,000 people, as of early 2026. The agency calls people in its custody adults in custody, or AICs.

The line between a state prison and a county jail is sentence length. A felony sentence of more than one year is served in an ODOC state prison; a sentence of one year or less, and almost all detention before trial, is served in a county jail run by the county sheriff. Some serious and violent crimes carry mandatory minimum prison terms under Measure 11. So a person awaiting trial or serving a short sentence is held in a county jail, not a state prison — and that county sets its own visiting, mail, and phone rules.

Almost everyone entering an Oregon state prison starts in one place: the Coffee Creek Intake Center in Wilsonville. Both men and women go through intake there — about 30 days of medical, mental-health, and custody screening. Personal visits are not allowed during intake; contact is by phone and mail until it is finished. After intake, men transfer to one of the men’s prisons, and women stay at Coffee Creek, which is also Oregon’s only women’s prison.

The men’s prisons include the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem — the state’s only maximum-security prison and its oldest, on its Salem site since 1866 — and Snake River Correctional Institution in Ontario, the largest, in the far eastern corner of the state near the Idaho border. Others are spread from Portland (Columbia River) to central and eastern Oregon (Deer Ridge, Two Rivers, Eastern Oregon, Warner Creek, Powder River).

To find where someone is held, search the Oregon Offender Search by name or by SID number — the State Identification number Oregon assigns each person. For custody and release updates, Oregon uses VISOR, a free notification system that replaced VINE. If a person does not appear in the Oregon Offender Search, they are most likely in a county jail — awaiting trial or serving a short sentence — so contact that county’s jail.

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