Clicking on any of the Illinois facilities below will direct you to an information page with Inmate Search, Visitation, Mail, Phone, Email, Most Wanted and FAQ for families and friends.
The Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) held 28,991 adults in November 2024, far below the 2013 peak of more than 49,000. The department was created in 1970 to bring the state’s prisons, youth centers and parole under one roof, and in 2006 its juvenile division split off into a separate agency. Illinois’s prison history goes back to the Alton penitentiary, which opened in 1833 and was replaced in the 1850s by the limestone prison at Joliet. Joliet closed in 2002 and is now a tourist site, best known from the opening scene of The Blues Brothers.
IDOC operates about 25 correctional centers, plus work camps, boot-camp-style impact incarceration programs and adult transition centers, where people near release live while working in the community. With far too many prisons to name each one, the best-known are:
Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, opened in 1925 and long known for its round “panopticon” cellhouse, has been emptied. After falling concrete and birds nesting in its crumbling buildings drew a federal lawsuit, a judge ordered most of its men moved out in 2024. Gov. JB Pritzker’s $900 million plan replaces it on the same 2,200-acre site with a 1,500-bed men’s prison and an 800-bed women’s prison. That women’s prison will replace Logan, which a 2023 state report called unsuitable for any population. Construction is expected to take about five years, and Logan stays open until then, but officials in Lincoln are fighting the loss of the prison, which moves the women 140 miles north.
Men sentenced in the Chicago area and northern Illinois go to the Northern Reception and Classification Center, which opened in 2004 just outside Stateville’s walls and remains open. Men from central and southern counties are processed at reception units at other prisons, and women are received at Logan. Intake includes medical and mental health screening, testing and a security classification, usually over a few weeks, before a transfer to a parent facility. Visits may be limited during reception, so call the facility before making the trip.
Use IDOC’s Individual in Custody Search to look up someone by name or IDOC number, a letter followed by five digits. Results show the person’s current facility, sentence and projected release date. People who have left custody are generally removed from the search.
Illinois abolished the death penalty in 2011. The change capped a decade of upheaval: after 13 men were exonerated and freed from death row, Gov. George Ryan declared a moratorium on executions in 2000 and in January 2003 emptied death row by commuting the sentences of everyone on it. Illinois carried out 12 executions after 1976; the last was Andrew Kokoraleis, by lethal injection, on March 17, 1999. The most severe sentence now is natural life in prison.
Medical care in IDOC prisons has been under a federal consent decree in the Lippert case since 2019, with court-appointed monitors repeatedly finding the state behind on its promises. Short staffing and aging buildings strain many prisons, and the system carries a large backlog of deferred repairs.
The Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice (IDJJ) became its own agency on July 1, 2006. Under a 2020 plan to move away from large youth prisons, it has shifted toward smaller centers closer to home. In late 2025 it ran Illinois Youth Centers in Chicago, Harrisburg, Pere Marquette and Warrenville, the PEACE Center in St. Charles and the new 30-bed Monarch Youth Center in Lincoln, which took in its first youth in November 2025. About 211 young people were in secure custody in December 2025. Detention before a court decision is handled by county juvenile detention centers. Juvenile records are confidential, so parents and guardians should contact IDJJ directly.
To search for an inmate or juvenile, or to learn how to visit, call, write or send money to someone in the Illinois Department of Corrections or Department of Juvenile Justice, choose a facility from the list below.