Clicking on any of the Wyoming facilities below will direct you to an information page with Inmate Search, Visitation, Mail, Phone, Email, Most Wanted and FAQ for families and friends.
Wyoming has the smallest population of any state, and its prison system is small too: five state-run institutions spread across a lot of open country. They are run by the Wyoming Department of Corrections (WDOC), which was created in 1991. A year earlier, voters approved a constitutional amendment abolishing the old State Board of Charities and Reform, which had overseen the prisons and other state institutions. WDOC also took over adult parole and probation.
Before statehood in 1890, prisoners were held at the Wyoming Territorial Prison in Laramie, now a historic site. Work on a state penitentiary in Rawlins began in 1888, and it finally opened in 1901 with 104 cells for men and women. For years after 1909, women sentenced in Wyoming were sent to Colorado. That old Rawlins building, now called the Wyoming Frontier Prison, held prisoners until 1981 and is open for tours today.
The Honor Farm’s partnership with the federal Bureau of Land Management began in 1988 and is one of the longest-running in the country. Prisoners there gentle and train wild horses, and more than 3,500 horses have been adopted out from the farm.
Men sentenced to prison in Wyoming go first to the Wyoming Medium Correctional Institution in Torrington for intake and assessment. Staff there decide each man’s custody level and treatment needs before assigning him to a permanent facility. Women go directly to the Wyoming Women’s Center in Lusk. Check the WDOC’s visitation page for current rules before you plan a trip.
The WDOC Offender Locator lets you search by WDOC inmate number or by name (at least the first two letters of the last name), with optional filters for age and gender. The department notes that the information may not always be current, so call the facility to confirm.
Short staffing pushed Wyoming to send people out of state. In November 2023, with about a quarter of uniformed jobs vacant, WDOC moved 240 men to the privately run Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility in Mississippi, more than 1,000 miles from home. As pay raises and recruiting improved staffing, the men came back in groups. In August 2026, the department said all 240 had returned to Wyoming. Staffing at the penitentiary in Rawlins rose from about 65% in September 2023 to a little over 83%. Every state-run facility is still full, though, so WDOC also rents beds in county jails, including in Kemmerer and Pinedale. The department says it can’t rule out sending people out of state again.
Wyoming still has the death penalty, and lethal injection is its method, but it has been used only once since 1976. Mark Hopkinson was executed in January 1992, the state’s most recent execution. The first legal execution in what became Wyoming was a public hanging in 1871, and a gas chamber was later installed at the old Rawlins prison, where five men were executed. Wyoming’s death row has been empty since a federal court overturned Dale Wayne Eaton’s death sentence in 2014. Prosecutors dropped their effort to resentence him to death in 2021. That same year, a bill to repeal the death penalty passed a Senate committee but failed in the full Senate.
Youth corrections are handled by the Wyoming Department of Family Services (DFS), not the WDOC. DFS runs two state institutions for young people a juvenile court has adjudicated delinquent:
Students at both schools can earn a high school diploma or equivalency certificate. Teens held before their court hearings stay in county or regional juvenile detention centers, not at the state schools. Juvenile records are confidential, so parents and guardians should call the school or their local DFS office directly.
To search for an inmate or juvenile, or to learn how to visit, call, write or send money to someone in the Wyoming Department of Corrections or Department of Family Services, choose a facility from the list below.