Someone was arrested and you cannot find them. You have searched every “Massachusetts inmate search” result on the first page of Google and none of them worked.
They did not work because Massachusetts has no statewide inmate locator. Not a broken one, not a hard-to-find one. It does not exist. Sites that appear to offer one are either reselling old data or pointing at a system that covers a fraction of the people in custody.
Here is what actually works, in the order to try it.
First, figure out which system holds them
Where someone is depends entirely on their status, and each status has a different lookup, or none.
- Just arrested, not yet in court: a local police lockup. In no online system anywhere.
- Awaiting trial: a county jail run by the sheriff.
- Serving up to two and a half years: a county house of correction. Under G.L. c. 279, § 23 a sentence longer than that cannot be served in a house of correction.
- Serving more than two and a half years: state prison, run by the Department of Correction.
- Federal charges: U.S. Marshals custody before designation, Bureau of Prisons after.
- Immigration detention: ICE, which in Massachusetts means Plymouth.
- Civil commitment for substance use under G.L. c. 123, § 35: MASAC at Plymouth for men. This is custody, and it is in no criminal system.
Search the wrong system and you get a false negative, which is worse than no answer because you stop looking.
The first twelve hours are the blind spot
If the arrest just happened, no database will help you. The person is at a police station, and police lockups do not feed any public system.
Call the arresting police department. That is the entire strategy for the first several hours.
While you are waiting, know what the law actually gives them. Under G.L. c. 276, § 33A, the officer in charge must inform an arrested person immediately on arrival of the right to use the telephone, and must permit its use within one hour, at the person’s expense, to contact family or friends, to arrange bail, or to reach a lawyer.
Note what the statute does not say. It sets no limit on the number of calls. The “one phone call” everyone believes in is not Massachusetts law.
When they go to court, and why Friday is bad
People assume arraignment happens the next business day. The rule says something looser.
Under Mass. R. Crim. P. 7(a)(1), an arrested person who is not released is brought before the court “if then in session; and if not, at its next session.”
The Supreme Judicial Court has described the consequence plainly: an arrest on a Friday means the person stays in custody through the weekend. If Monday is a holiday, they stay until Tuesday. In court divisions that do not sit daily, it can be more than four days.
There is a separate 24-hour rule, and it will not help you. After a warrantless arrest a clerk-magistrate must make a probable cause determination within 24 hours, but that happens on paper, ex parte, with the arrested person having no right to be present or represented. It is a records check, not a hearing, and nobody gets released because of it.
County jails: only one county has an online lookup
Massachusetts has fourteen sheriffs. Thirteen of them hold prisoners; Nantucket has no jail and transports people to the Barnstable House of Correction by boat or plane.
Of those, exactly one publishes a public inmate search.
Worcester County operates a real lookup at inmatesearch.wcsoma.org, and our full Worcester County jail guide covers visiting, mail, and deposits there. You can search by first name, last name, or both, or by inmate number, and results include the inmate number, name, date of birth, and housing block and cell.
County by county guides
We are building a detailed guide for each county, covering how to locate someone, how visiting actually works there, where mail goes, and how to put money on the books. Published so far:
- Suffolk County, covering the Nashua Street Jail and South Bay.
- Worcester County, the only county with a public online lookup.
- Essex County, where visiting rotates by housing unit and women are held in Barnstable.
For every other county, the answer is a phone call to the facility’s records division. That includes Suffolk, Middlesex, Essex, Norfolk, Bristol, Hampden, Plymouth, Berkshire, Barnstable, Franklin, Hampshire, and Dukes. There is no shortcut, and any site claiming to search these counties for you is not doing so.
For Suffolk County specifically, we published the direct numbers and the full visiting, mail, and money rules here.
State prison: VINELink, and its big limitation
The Department of Correction does not operate its own inmate locator. It directs the public to VINELink, at vinelink.com, or (866) 277-7477. You can search by full first and last name, or by commitment number, and anyone may search; registration is only needed for notifications.
Now the limitation, which is the single most important sentence on this page. In the Department’s own words, only the Massachusetts Department of Correction participates in the Massachusetts VINE program.
County jails do not feed VINE. So if you search VINELink for someone awaiting trial in a county facility, you will find nothing, and that nothing means nothing.
One nuance worth knowing: DOC custody is not purely post-sentence. MCI-Framingham holds women who are serving sentences, awaiting trial, or civilly committed, and Bridgewater State Hospital holds civil commitments and sometimes pretrial detainees sent for competency evaluations. So a pretrial search of VINELink is not always futile, particularly for women.
Federal custody
The Bureau of Prisons inmate locator at bop.gov/inmateloc covers federal inmates from 1982 forward. Search by name, or by register number, and results show name, register number, age, race, sex, release date, and location.
Massachusetts has one BOP institution: FMC Devens in Ayer, (978) 796-1000.
The gap to understand: people facing federal charges are usually in U.S. Marshals custody before the BOP designates them, and the Marshals house detainees in contracted county facilities. In this district that has principally meant Plymouth County. During that period they generally will not appear in the BOP locator.
The BOP’s own warning applies here too: if someone shows as “Released” or “Not in BOP Custody” with no facility listed, they may still be held by another agency.
Immigration detention
ICE runs the Online Detainee Locator System at locator.ice.gov. You need either an A-number plus country of birth, or first name, last name, country of birth, and date of birth.
It does not show anyone under 18, does not show people no longer in ICE custody, and its data lags.
In Massachusetts, the confirmed ICE detention site is the Plymouth County Correctional Facility, whose own guidance directs families to the ICE locator. Attorneys there have 24-hour in-person client access and virtual visit options.
Worth knowing as background: in Lunn v. Commonwealth, 477 Mass. 517 (2017), the SJC held that Massachusetts court officers have no authority to hold someone solely on a federal civil immigration detainer.
Immigration enforcement practice has been changing quickly. Confirm current facility information directly with ICE rather than relying on any secondhand list, including this one.
Finding the court, and the daily list nobody knows about
Once you know which police department made the arrest, the courthouse follows from the town. Use the Trial Court’s courthouse locator at mass.gov/courthouse-locator.
Then use the tool almost nobody outside the courthouse knows exists. Each courthouse publishes a same-day list of scheduled cases, including its arraignment session, as a public PDF. Those lists show defendant names, case numbers, times, the judge, and counsel, and they are linked from each courthouse’s page on the Trial Court site.
Two cautions. The list is scheduled events only, so someone arrested overnight may not be on it yet. And the Trial Court labels these as unofficial records generated from its case management system.
If the person is not on the list, call the clerk’s office for that court.
Court records: you cannot search a criminal case by name
This one stops families cold, and it is a rule rather than a glitch.
The public portal at masscourts.org covers the Boston Municipal, District, Housing, Land, Probate and Family, and Superior Courts. Juvenile Court is not on it.
Under Trial Court Rule XIV, Rule 5, civil cases may be searched by party name, case number, or other criteria. Criminal cases may be searched by case number only.
So without a docket number you cannot look up a relative’s criminal case online. What you can see, once you have the number, is the defendant’s name, appearing attorneys, the docket itself, and calendar information.
Two workarounds. Go to the clerk’s office in person, where public access is broader and you are not required to explain why you want the record. Or retain counsel: registered Massachusetts attorneys have a portal that does permit criminal name searching.
Abuse prevention and harassment order proceedings, and sexually dangerous person proceedings, are never remotely accessible. Sealed records and juvenile delinquency records are not public at all, and their absence is not evidence that nothing exists.
Our step-by-step walkthrough of the portal is here.
One thing that will not help: a CORI check. Public Open Access CORI returns no pending charges and takes up to ten business days, which makes it useless for someone arrested last night. We cover CORI here.
Bail, and three things families get wrong
If court is not in session, bail can still be set out of court by a bail commissioner, and it happens at the police station rather than a courthouse.
The fee is $80, and you do not pay it. Under G.L. c. 262, § 24 the maximum fee is $80, and for bail taken outside regular working hours the fee is charged only to the trial court. Fee-splitting arrangements are prohibited. If you have read elsewhere that the family pays $40 up front, that is out of date.
Release on personal recognizance is the default. G.L. c. 276, § 58 says the official shall release the person on personal recognizance without surety unless satisfied that will not reasonably assure their appearance. And the statute requires that any bail amount take the person’s financial resources into account, which the SJC reinforced in Brangan v. Commonwealth, 477 Mass. 691 (2017).
Two situations where nobody is getting out tonight. A person eighteen or older arrested on an abuse-related offense cannot be admitted to bail for six hours except by a judge in open court. And a person arrested for violating a restraining order cannot be released out of court by a bail commissioner at all. Both wait for a judge.
What to have ready before you start calling
Full legal name, not a nickname. Date of birth. County of arrest if you know it. Then whichever number applies: commitment number for DOC, booking number for a county jail, register number for BOP, A-number for ICE.
Two practical notes. Hyphenated and compound surnames are frequently indexed under a different component than families expect, so try each part separately. And remember that a “not found” result almost never means “not in custody,” because most of these systems cover only a slice of the whole.
Common questions
Is there a Massachusetts statewide inmate search?
No. The Department of Correction directs the public to VINELink, which covers DOC facilities only. County jails do not participate, and only Worcester County publishes its own online lookup.
How do I find someone in a county jail?
Call the sheriff’s department records division for that county. Worcester is the only county with a public online search.
Does VINELink cover county jails in Massachusetts?
No. Per the Department of Correction, only DOC participates in the Massachusetts VINE program.
How long before someone is arraigned?
They are brought before the court if it is in session, and if not, at its next session. A Friday arrest generally means the weekend in custody, longer if Monday is a holiday.
Do arrested people get one phone call?
That is a myth. G.L. c. 276, § 33A requires that the person be told about phone access immediately on arrival and permitted to use it within an hour, and sets no limit on the number of calls.
Can I look up a criminal case by name online?
No. Trial Court rules allow name searching for civil cases only; criminal cases are searchable by docket number. Go to the clerk’s office in person, or have an attorney search the portal.
How much does a bail commissioner cost?
The maximum fee is $80, and for after-hours bail it is charged to the trial court, not to the family.
Can a bail commissioner release someone arrested for violating a 209A order?
No. That person must wait for a judge. A six-hour hold also applies to adults arrested on abuse-related offenses.
Verified against Massachusetts statutes, Trial Court rules, and official agency pages in August 2026. Immigration detention practice changes frequently; confirm current information directly with the agency. This is general information, not legal advice.