You know that your loved one is held in some prison or jail system, but do you know what state... or country? Do officers deny providing you the necessary details, claiming that they are confidential? Well then you have another legal way to locate where your inmate is.

All regulatory agencies are bound by law to record the details of their inmates. Almost all of the regulatory agencies also publish their inmate record databases online. This makes the task of finding your loved ones easier.

You may be required to do some exhaustive Internet search for locating all the federal prisons or state department of corrections in your country. However, the efforts will surely pay off because you will ultimately find your inmate.

The best way to find most, if not all, of the prison agencies in your area is to search the telephone directory either online or from the book under governmental resources. Telephone directories almost always list the web URLS of the organizations that have one. Thus, you will not only get the telephone numbers but their web addresses as well. For a faster search, JailGuide.com has an online database of every prison location and prison phone number in the world.

You may try calling the jail and personally inquire about your loved one, but it is hard that you might get a beneficial response. Searching their website for information is a much better option. As well, you'll also find the information about prison visitation and how to send money or items to the inmate.

Make a list of all the websites you have found during the search and start visiting them one by one. Almost all of the websites would have their record database online. You may enter the details of the person you are looking for and send a query. The database will return a list of people with the same names. You can however, fine tune it further by filtering the list for age, race and other details.

You can easily locate where your inmate is from the convenience of your home. There is no need to visit the prisons in person and go through all the lengthy security checks, or wait long hours in order to be able to talk to an officer.