Nebraska Prisons | DOC | Prison Inmate Search

Clicking on any of the Nebraska facilities below will direct you to an information page with Inmate Search, Visitation, Mail, Phone, Email, Most Wanted and FAQ for families and friends.

Search for an Inmate or Active Arrest Warrant in Nebraska

First name (required)

Last name (required)

Age (optional)

Race (optional)

Nebraska Department of Correctional Services - Prisons & Inmate Search

Nebraska State Prisons and Juvenile Facilities

Adults sentenced to prison in Nebraska serve their time with the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services (NDCS), headquartered in Lincoln. The system’s roots run deep: parts of the Nebraska State Penitentiary campus in Lincoln date to 1869, just two years after statehood. NDCS also ran the state’s youth centers for 23 years, until they were handed to the Department of Health and Human Services on January 1, 1997.

NDCS is a small system with a big crowding problem. More than 5,700 people were held in its facilities in 2025, about 92% of them men, in prisons built for roughly 4,500. The state declared an overcrowding emergency in 2020, and a 2025 report from the Inspector General of Corrections ranked Nebraska first in the nation for prison crowding by operational capacity and second, behind Alabama, by design capacity. Staffing has also been a struggle: vacancies peaked at 527 in 2021 and stood at 295 in June 2025, even after average pay rose by about $30,000 since 2015. Every adult facility is accredited by the American Correctional Association.

Nebraska’s prisons

Nebraska State Penitentiary, Lincoln (the oldest, scheduled to be replaced)
Reception and Treatment Center, Lincoln (intake for men)
Lincoln Correctional Center, Lincoln
Tecumseh State Correctional Institution, Tecumseh (maximum security; houses death row)
Omaha Correctional Center, Omaha
Nebraska Correctional Youth Facility, Omaha (young people sentenced as adults)
Nebraska Correctional Center for Women, York (all women in NDCS custody)
Work Ethic Camp, McCook
Community Corrections Centers in Lincoln and Omaha (work release)

Where do new prisoners go first?

Every man sentenced to NDCS starts at the Reception and Treatment Center on West Van Dorn Street in Lincoln, formerly called the Diagnostic and Evaluation Center. It opened in August 1979 with 176 beds and has since run at two to two-and-a-half times its original design. Staff there complete evaluations, classify each person and assign them to a permanent facility. The center also holds people sent for 90-day court-ordered evaluations, county safekeepers and returned parole violators. In 2022 it gained 384 high-security beds and two 32-bed mental health units. Women are received at the women’s prison in York.

Finding someone in NDCS custody

The state’s NDCS Inmate Search lets you look someone up by name or NDCS ID number. Once you have the number, keep it handy for letters, deposits and visiting paperwork, since it follows the person through every transfer.

A new prison for Lincoln

Nebraska is building a 1,512-bed, multi-custody prison on the northeast edge of Lincoln, near 70th Street and Bluff Road just north of I-80. Lawmakers set aside $350 million in 2023, and in June 2025 the department picked Lincoln-based Hausmann Construction, which bid about $313 million. When the new prison is finished, the state plans to begin shutting down the aging penitentiary it replaces. Critics in the Legislature warn that it may already be crowded on opening day if the prison population doesn’t fall.

Capital punishment

Nebraska’s path on the death penalty is unusual. In 2008 the state Supreme Court struck down the electric chair, then the state’s only method, which halted executions until lawmakers adopted lethal injection in 2009. In 2015 the Legislature abolished capital punishment, overriding Gov. Pete Ricketts’s veto. A year later, voters brought it back by a 61% to 39% margin. On August 14, 2018, Carey Dean Moore became the first person executed in Nebraska in 21 years, and the first anywhere in the U.S. put to death with a drug combination that included the opioid fentanyl. He remains the most recent. The state has carried out four executions since 1976 and 34 before that. The Death Penalty Information Center lists 11 people on death row. Death row moved from the penitentiary to Tecumseh in 2002, but executions still take place at the Nebraska State Penitentiary in Lincoln.

Nebraska youth facilities

The state’s youth centers are run by the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), not the prison system. Young people committed by a juvenile court may be placed at one of three Youth Rehabilitation and Treatment Centers:

YRTC-Kearney, for boys, founded in 1879
YRTC-Hastings, for girls, on new buildings opened in 2021
YRTC-Lincoln, opened in 2020 for boys and girls with higher behavioral and mental health needs

DHHS also runs Whitehall in Lincoln, a residential treatment program for teenage boys. The girls’ center at Geneva, open since 1892, was emptied in 2019 after serious building problems. In July 2026, after several Kearney staff members were charged with sex crimes involving youth, DHHS named an interim administrator over all three centers and added unannounced inspections and new reporting rules. Youth awaiting court are usually held in county detention centers. Juvenile records are confidential, so families should contact DHHS directly.

To search for an inmate or juvenile, or to learn how to visit, call, write or send money to someone in the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services or Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services Youth Rehabilitation and Treatment Centers, choose a facility from the list below.