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How to Find an Inmate in Montana

If someone you love was just arrested or sent to prison in Montana, the first thing you need is also the hardest to get: a straight answer about where they are. Montana does not have one single database that lists everyone in custody. The person you are looking for could be in a county jail, a state prison, a federal facility, or immigration detention, and each of those is searched a different way. This guide walks you through all four, in the order most families need them, and tells you what to do when someone does not show up at all.

Montana has one feature that surprises a lot of families, so it is worth saying up front. There is no federal prison inside the state, and no standalone immigration detention center either. People facing federal charges or immigration holds are usually held briefly in a Montana county jail and then moved out of state. That changes how you search for them, and this guide will tell you where to look.

Start here: figure out which system is holding them

Before you search anything, answer one question, because it tells you which tool to use.

How long ago were they taken into custody, and what happened? Someone who was arrested in the last few days is almost always in the county jail for the county where the arrest happened. They stay there through booking, first appearance, and often through their entire case if it is a local charge. People do not go to state prison when they are arrested. They go to state prison only after they have been sentenced and physically transferred into the custody of the Montana Department of Corrections, which can take weeks after sentencing while intake and assessment are completed.

So the rule of thumb is simple. Recently arrested, case still pending, or a short sentence: look in the county jail. Sentenced to state prison time and transferred: look in the Montana Department of Corrections. Federal charge: look in the federal system. Immigration hold: look in ICE custody. Most families searching for someone newly arrested waste time on the state prison site when their person is sitting in a county jail across town.

Searching the Montana state prison system (DOC)

The Montana Department of Corrections, or DOC, holds everyone serving a state prison sentence, including those housed at the privately run Crossroads Correctional Center in Shelby that the state contracts with. Its public Correctional Offender Network Search, sometimes called ConWeb, lets you look up a person by name or by DOC ID number (the department's own offender identification number) and returns their current facility, custody status, sentence details, and projected release date.

To search, you generally need the person's first and last name, and the DOC ID number helps narrow it when the name is common. The search covers people under DOC jurisdiction, and the status field will show whether someone is held in a facility, released, or on parole or probation, so a person being supervised in the community rather than locked up may still turn up here. If a name returns too many results it can error out, so add the first and last name together to narrow it.

What the results will not tell you is anything about a county case. If your person was arrested last week and has not been sentenced and transferred, they will not be in the DOC system at all. That is normal, not a dead end. It means they are still in the county system.

Searching county jails in Montana (recently arrested)

Montana has 56 counties, and each one runs its own jail and its own inmate roster, usually through the county sheriff's office. There is no statewide county jail search, so you have to find the roster for the specific county where the arrest happened.

If you know the county, search for that county's jail roster directly, or find the facility on InmateAid and use the search link on its page. The largest county systems, where most arrests happen, are Yellowstone (Billings), Gallatin (Bozeman), Missoula, Flathead (Kalispell), Cascade (Great Falls), and Lewis and Clark (Helena). Counties like Yellowstone and Missoula post simple name-search rosters with booking numbers and charges. Some update within hours, others lag, and the smallest rural counties may not post online at all, in which case calling the sheriff's office is the fastest route.

To search a county roster you typically need the person's full name. A booking number, if you have it, finds the record immediately. If you are not certain which county made the arrest, the city where it happened tells you: look up which county that city sits in, then search that county's jail.

Federal inmates from Montana (BOP)

Montana is unusual in that it has no federal Bureau of Prisons facility within the state. If the charge was federal, the person is still in BOP custody, but they are most likely held out of state, and you search the BOP's own national inmate locator, which covers everyone in federal custody from 1982 to the present and searches by name or by federal register number.

Before a person is moved to a BOP facility elsewhere, they often spend time in a Montana county jail under a federal contract, held for the US Marshals Service. The Cascade County Detention Center near Great Falls is the main jail that holds federal detainees in Montana. So if the BOP locator does not show your person yet, check the county jail where the arrest happened, and call the US Marshals if you are unsure.

ICE detainees in Montana

If the person is being held on an immigration matter, they are in ICE custody, which is a civil detention system separate from criminal jail and prison. ICE detainees are not criminals serving sentences; they are held while their immigration cases are decided. You search for them using the federal ICE Online Detainee Locator, which works by the detainee's A-Number (a nine-digit immigration identification number) or by their full name, country of birth, and date of birth.

Montana has no standalone immigration detention facility. In practice, people detained by ICE in Montana are held short term at the Cascade County Detention Center near Great Falls, the one county jail in the state contracted to hold immigration detainees beyond 72 hours, and from there they are commonly transferred to federal facilities in other states, often in Washington or Nevada. Because of this, a detainee may show up briefly on the Cascade County roster, then appear in the ICE locator at an out-of-state facility. If you have the A-Number, use it, because name searches in the immigration system are far less reliable when names are common or were recorded differently than expected. If your person disappears from the Montana roster, check the ICE locator, because they have likely been moved out of state.

When you cannot find them anywhere

If you have searched and your person is not turning up, work through these explanations before assuming the worst.

The booking is not complete yet. Newly arrested people can take hours to appear on a roster, and newly sentenced people can sit in a county jail for weeks before showing up in the state system. Try again later. They were released, transferred, or moved between systems. Someone can post bond, get transferred to another county, or be handed from county to federal or immigration custody and moved out of state, and during the handoff they may briefly appear nowhere. The name does not match the record. People are booked under legal names, middle names, maiden names, or misspellings. Try variations, and search with less information rather than more. They are a minor. Juveniles are not listed in public adult locators at all, regardless of facility.

When the online tools fail, calling works. Call the jail or facility you believe is holding them, give the full name and date of birth, and ask the booking desk or records office to confirm custody status. That is often faster than any website.

Get notified automatically: VINELink

Rather than checking rosters over and over, you can register with VINE, the free victim and family notification service Montana participates in. It lets you look up a person's custody status and sign up for automatic alerts about changes such as transfer or release. It is the simplest way to stop refreshing a website every day.

Once you have found them

Finding the person is the first step. Staying connected is the next, and it matters more than most families realize for how someone gets through their time.

The best place to start is mail. Letters and photos reach almost everyone in custody, they are the most reliable form of contact, and a person who hears from home regularly does easier time. Phone calls are the next layer, and Montana does something worth knowing here: in its state prisons, the DOC gives each inmate one free phone call every week, with additional calls billed at a low per-minute rate after that. Communication in state facilities runs largely through tablets, so calls, messages, and video visits are set up through the prison's tablet provider once your person sends an invitation. County jails set their own phone rates separately, and the federal rate caps that took effect in April 2026 lowered what those jails can charge. You can also send money to most facilities so your person can cover phone time, commissary, and basic needs.

To set any of this up for the specific facility holding your loved one, find that facility on InmateAid and follow the instructions on its page, since the rules, the phone carrier, and the mailing address are different at every facility.

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See every prison, jail, and detention center in Montana: /prisons/montana

Understand the new 2026 call rates: link to FCC Prison Phone Rate Caps 2026 guide

Search arrest records across Montana: Arrest Record Search (honestly labeled affiliate)