City & County Jails in Tennessee
Tennessee - Inmate Search - All County Jail Rosters
Clicking on any of the Tennessee Counties or Cities below will direct you to a list of all the City Jails, County Jails and Juvenile Detention Centers in that specific County.
Search for any jail in Tennessee
Tennessee county jails and state prisons
Tennessee has 95 counties, and the sheriff runs the jail. Shelby in Memphis, Davidson in Nashville, Knox in Knoxville, and Hamilton in Chattanooga are the buildings most families are looking for. Rutherford, Williamson, and Sullivan are the next size down. A rural county in West Tennessee or on the Cumberland Plateau may have one jail and send the overflow to a neighbor. City police have a holding room. That is not a county jail.
The Tennessee Corrections Institute inspects the jails and sets the capacity number. On June 30, 2026, the jails held 27,910 people, 23,535 men and 4,375 women. Thirty facilities were over capacity and held 11,551 of those people. The count breaks down in a way that surprises families. Pretrial felony detainees were 10,949. Pretrial misdemeanor detainees were 4,258. Convicted misdemeanants were 3,084. Locally sentenced felons, people the court left in the jail, were 2,708. State backup, people sentenced to the Department of Correction and still sitting in a county jail, was 4,763.
Jails in Tennessee hold people before trial, people serving a short sentence, and a share of state inmates. A year or less stays with the sheriff. A longer felony sentence is supposed to go to the Department of Correction, and often does not leave the county until a bed opens. A federal sentence goes to the Bureau of Prisons. FCI Memphis is the federal prison in the state. The state prisons families ask about include Bledsoe, Trousdale Turner, Northwest, and the women’s prison at Debra K. Johnson in Nashville. Those are not county jails. When a jail holds somebody for the state or the Marshals, it bills a daily rate.
How many county jails are there in Tennessee?
Most of the 95 counties operate a jail, and a few of the big ones run more than one building. Shelby, Davidson, Knox, and Hamilton account for a large share of the beds. A full jail in a small county means a transfer, not a second jail in the same town.
How many juvenile detention centers are there in Tennessee?
The large counties run a juvenile detention center for a youth waiting on a hearing. Shelby, Davidson, Knox, and Hamilton keep their own. Smaller counties contract. A youth in one of those centers is usually waiting on court.
The Department of Children’s Services runs the commitment side. Wilder Youth Development Center in Somerville is the secure state facility. Regional community placements take youth who do not need that lockup. Those are not county jails. Search the county of the arrest. The listing shows the detention center that county uses, and Wilder only if the youth has been committed.
What the first days in a Tennessee county jail are like
At the Shelby County jail or the Davidson County jail, the first day is a booking floor. Name, prints, a medical screen, a search, clothes in a bag, one call if the phones are working. The person has not been convicted. There is no phone in the cell, and no way to know if the job, the truck, or the kids got covered. Glasses stay in property until somebody signs for them. The person in the next bunk may be pretrial, or may already be a state inmate waiting on a prison bed.
Summer sits hard on the building. The uniform does not fit. The bunk is thin, and the next bed is awake. Meals are plain and on a clock. Mail is slow. A visit from a county seat to Memphis or Nashville is a drive that may not happen. Withdrawal from alcohol, opioids, or methamphetamine can start before the bond hearing, and the night is when that gets loud. Deputies who apply the rules the same way to everybody run a quieter pod. Uneven rules are how contraband moves. Shelby and Davidson can separate by risk. A small West Tennessee jail often cannot, and a full jail there means a transfer.
Tablets, video visits, and deposits take some of the isolation out of the bigger jails. A message home does not fix the bed or the case, and the account can be shut off. Each county page on this site lists the jail phone, the vendor, and the way to send money for that sheriff’s office.