Transfers & Facility Placement in Wyoming (WDOC)
Where people go after sentencing in Wyoming — intake at Torrington or Lusk, county jail and out-of-state placement, and how to track someone through the Offender Locator.
Intake: Where Everyone Starts
Every man sentenced to Wyoming prison time (other than a death sentence) enters the system at the Wyoming Medium Correctional Institution in Torrington, the state’s designated intake and assessment center. Every woman enters at the Wyoming Women’s Center in Lusk. During intake the person is assessed, tested, and classified — and under the published visiting policy, people in intake status are not eligible for visits until the process ends and they receive a housing assignment. Initial classification is completed within 45 days of commitment under the published classification policy, so plan for roughly that long without in-person contact at the start. Mail and approved phone calls still work during intake.
Classification assigns one of five published custody levels — minimum, minimum restricted, medium, close, and maximum — which determines where the person can be housed. Classification is reviewed at least every 12 months, and a custody change can mean a transfer.
Where Placement Can Lead
Wyoming’s five prisons each have a defined role: high custody at the State Penitentiary in Rawlins, medium custody and treatment programs at the Medium Correctional Institution in Torrington, women at the Women’s Center in Lusk (with a women’s intensive treatment unit in Newcastle), and minimum custody at the Honor Farm in Riverton and the Honor Conservation Camp in Newcastle. The facility pages below cover each one.
Placement is not limited to those five:
- County jails. WDOC holds some sentenced people in county jails — its quarterly population report for early 2026 lists a daily average of 56. People in county jails follow that jail’s visiting, mail, and phone rules, not WDOC’s, and the locator shows them only as “In Custody,” without naming the jail.
- Out of state. The same report lists a daily average of 171 people in out-of-state placement. WDOC’s annual report describes temporary out-of-state placements driven by staffing shortages, with 125 men returned in fiscal year 2025 and the rest waiting on staffing at the Rawlins penitentiary; news reporting identifies the placement as the Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility in Mississippi, beginning in late 2023. Anyone visiting there follows that facility’s rules; the published Wyoming visiting policy allows special video visits for people housed out of state, where the host facility can provide them.
- Community corrections centers. People nearing release can move to contracted adult community corrections centers, which operate under their own program rules.
Tracking Where Someone Is
The Wyoming Offender Locator at wdoc-loc.wyo.gov is the official tool. It searches by WDOC number or by the first two or more letters of a last name, and shows the person’s facility along with projected parole-eligibility and discharge dates. One published limit matters: the locator gives no location detail for anyone outside a WDOC facility. Per its own FAQ, a person shown as “In Custody” may be at court, in a hospital, in treatment, in a county jail, or out of state — the locator does not say which, and it does not name the Mississippi facility or any county jail. When the locator shows “In Custody” with no Wyoming facility, the person’s location has to come from them, their case manager, or WDOC. People serving county sentences outside WDOC custody are not listed at all.
WDOC does not itself notify families when someone is transferred. The published channel for automated updates is VINE (1-866-994-8463 or vinelink.com, free and confidential): WDOC’s locator FAQ directs anyone — not only crime victims — to register through VINE for updates on a person’s movement. WDOC’s Victim Services unit (doc-victim-services@wyo.gov) separately handles notification for registered victims.
What a Transfer Changes
The published visiting policy requires a new visitor application only when someone leaves WDOC custody and returns — it does not address whether an approved list carries over in a transfer between facilities, so confirm with the receiving facility whether re-approval is needed. What clearly changes with a move:
- Mail must be re-addressed to the new facility immediately — each facility receives its own mail, and the addresses are in Mail & Packages
- Visiting schedules are facility-specific, with different days and session formats at each institution
- A move to a county jail or out of state changes everything — different rules, different phone vendor, and possibly no WDOC deposit channel; confirm procedures with the holding facility
Verify Before Acting
Sources
This page is compiled from the following publicly available sources. Policies change without notice — confirm current details with the facility before relying on them.