Virginia

The Virginia Department of Corrections (VADOC) runs the state’s adult prison system — about three dozen institutions across an Eastern, Central, and Western region, holding roughly 23,000 people in mid-2025 — and supervises probation and parole. VADOC’s materials increasingly use “inmate” rather than “offender”; this site uses neutral terms.

Where a person is held turns first on a single line: sentence length. Under Virginia law, a felony sentence of one year or more (for a crime committed on or after January 1, 1995) places a person in state custody — “state-responsible” — while a sentence under 12 months, and almost all detention before trial, stays in a local or regional jail run by a sheriff or jail authority. The catch families run into is that being state-responsible does not guarantee a person is in a state prison: Virginia holds many state-responsible people in local and regional jails, sometimes for an entire sentence, and a jail sets its own visiting, mail, phone, and money rules.

Men are held across prisons statewide, with reception and intake near Richmond; women are held at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women in Troy — the main women’s prison and the women’s intake point — and the Virginia Correctional Center for Women in Goochland. The highest-security prisons, Red Onion and Wallens Ridge, are in far southwest Virginia; the largest, Greensville, is in Jarratt. Two facts shape long sentences here: Virginia abolished parole in 1995 for crimes committed on or after that January (most people now serve at least 85% of a sentence, with narrow exceptions for older crimes, some juvenile cases, and geriatric release), and Virginia abolished the death penalty in 2021 — the first Southern state to do so — so there is no death row.

To find where a specific person is held, search the VADOC Inmate & Supervisee Locator, which covers state-responsible people — including those held in a local or regional jail under VADOC authority. If a person is not listed there, they are likely local-responsible (a short sentence or awaiting trial); contact that city or county jail directly, or use Virginia’s VINELink. Use the guides below for the statewide rules at VADOC prisons, or go straight to a specific facility.