West Virginia

West Virginia runs a combined system: since 2018, one agency — the Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DCR) — has operated the state prisons (called correctional centers), the regional jails, and the juvenile centers. The agency uses the word inmate.

The most important thing for a West Virginia family to sort out first is which kind of facility holds the person. Regional jails hold people awaiting trial and people serving short (usually misdemeanor) sentences; state prisons hold people serving longer felony sentences. A newly arrested person almost always starts in a regional jail, and after a felony sentence is supposed to be transferred to a state prison. But transfers can be slow, and state law specifically allows a felony-sentenced person to be held in a regional jail — so a sentenced person may still be in a regional jail for a while. (As of late 2025 the regional jails were over capacity while the state prisons had room, which is why the jails stay crowded.)

This split matters because the inmate locator is split too. West Virginia’s Offender Search has separate searches for the prisons and for the regional jails — so if a person does not turn up in one, check the other. Search by name or by Offender ID (OID) number. For custody and release alerts, West Virginia uses VINE (1-866-984-8463 or vinelink.com), which spans the system.

The DCR runs eight state prisons. The Mount Olive Correctional Complex near Charleston is the state’s only maximum-security prison for men; the Lakin Correctional Center in West Columbia is the only women’s prison and the women’s intake point. Six men’s prisons hold medium and lower custody across the state: Huttonsville (the oldest, and the main classification and intake center for men), Saint Marys (oriented toward aging and medical-needs men), Salem (with a substance-abuse and intake unit), Denmar, Pruntytown, and Stevens (which became a state prison in 2025). Newly sentenced men are received and classified within the prison system — Huttonsville and Salem run the intake units — as West Virginia does not publish a single named reception center for men. West Virginia has no death penalty — it was abolished in 1965 — so there is no death row.

A few other parts of the system are worth knowing. The Northern Correctional Facility at Moundsville is a combined prison and regional jail on one campus, holding some sentenced men — up to maximum security — alongside jail detainees. (It is a modern facility, not the historic West Virginia Penitentiary in the same town, which closed in 1995 and is now a museum.) West Virginia also runs work-release and community-corrections centers in Beckley, Charleston, and Parkersburg, and the Anthony Correctional Center, a court-ordered program for young adults that is currently closed for reconstruction, with its participants housed at other facilities in the meantime.

The guides below cover the rules at the state prisons. A person in a regional jail may be under different rules, so for someone in a regional jail, contact that facility. Use the guides for statewide prison rules, or go straight to a specific facility.