Tennessee

The Tennessee Department of Correction (TDOC) runs the state’s prison system — 14 adult prisons holding roughly 20,000 people. Ten are operated directly by TDOC, and four are operated by a private contractor, CoreCivic, under contract with the state; the CoreCivic-operated prisons hold TDOC-sentenced people and follow TDOC’s statewide visiting, mail, and communication rules. TDOC’s materials generally use the words inmate and offender; this site uses neutral terms.

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

Newly sentenced people are processed at a reception and classification center first — men at the Bledsoe County Correctional Complex in Pikeville, and women at the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center in Nashville (formerly the Tennessee Prison for Women) — for an assessment before transfer to a permanent prison, so the prison shown in the locator may change. Tennessee has an active death penalty and resumed executions in 2025: men under a death sentence are held at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, which also houses the state’s execution chamber, and women under a death sentence are held at the Debra K. Johnson Rehabilitation Center. The Lois M. DeBerry Special Needs Facility in Nashville is the system’s statewide medical and mental-health center.

To find where someone is held, use the state’s Felony Offender Information Lookup (FOIL) by name or TDOC ID number; it covers people in TDOC custody, not county-jail detainees. If a person is not listed, they may be in a county jail — search that county’s roster. As of November 2025, incoming personal mail no longer goes to the prison — TDOC routes it to an off-site center that scans it and delivers it to the person’s tablet (see the mail guide). Use the guides below for the statewide rules at Tennessee prisons, or go straight to a specific facility.