Florida inmate search

Most local jails across Florida are run by County sheriff's offices; a few counties have a county corrections department instead. Intake, court hearings, and releases stay under each county's own control.

• The Miami-Dade Corrections and Rehabilitation Department runs 2 other jails in addition to Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center.
• With its own Booking and Release Center, Orange County Corrections is a county department rather than a sheriff's office.
• Broward Sheriff's Office runs Broward Sheriff's Office Main Jail, and it also runs Central Intake in Fort Lauderdale.
• The Orient Road and Falkenburg Road jails are where Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office runs Hillsborough County Jail.

Because Florida lacks one statewide roster for county jails, search the roster for the county of the arrest. Searching by name, booking date, or booking number works with most lookups.

Not every county shows the same information. Charges, bond amounts, and booking photos appear on both the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office arrest inquiry and the Orange County BestJail inmate search, which refresh every 30 minutes. Released inmates stay online for 30 days on the Pinellas County Jail roster, where you can search by the arresting agency or the type of arrest. You can also search by alias in Polk County.

A new arrest can take 24 hours to show up on general listings in Hillsborough. When an arrest took place only a few hours ago, phone the jail directly.

Florida's state prison system is run by the Florida Department of Corrections, or FDC. To search across all state corrections offender databases, use the Florida Department of Corrections offender search.

A county jail roster is not the same as this state lookup. Booking, first court appearances, and bond hearings happen at a county jail, where local police take newly arrested people. County rosters show who is held after an arrest; counties such as Duval or Charlotte also list past bookings. Only offenders who are in the state corrections system after sentencing appear in the FDC database. When the arrest is recent, look at the county jail roster.

Anyone can use Florida VINELink, a free automated service, to see where an inmate is right now and the tentative date of release. When you don't know which facility is holding your family member, this is a good place to check.

The Florida Department of Corrections VINE service also runs a toll-free phone line at 1-877-846-3435, open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Release notifications also go out through VINE at local facilities like the Polk County Jail. Registrations on the national vinelink.com website don't get forwarded to the Florida Department of Corrections.

Chapter 903 of the Florida Statutes, Section 648.34, Section 648.35, and Chapter 69B-221 of the Florida Administrative Code govern bail in Florida. You can pay the jail a cash bond in full, or you can use a surety bond that a bail bond agent posts.

When you hire an agent, the bond fee you pay is called the premium. The Florida Department of Financial Services has rate filings that list a minimum premium of 10% on state bonds and 15% on federal bonds. Your payment covers the bond for its whole term, not 1 year, and every similar bond has the same rate. If a case moves to another court, there's no added fee unless the bond goes up. You get a refund when the bond is surrendered, unless a contract violation caused that surrender.