The Utah Department of Corrections, UDC, offers an Offender Search with one note on its face: the search is only for those currently under the department's supervision, and people awaiting trial or not yet sentenced who are housed in county jails are not listed. A state inmate may be housed at the Utah State Correctional Facility in Salt Lake City, the Central Utah Correctional Facility in Gunnison, or one of the county jails that contract with the department under the Utah Correctional Standards, revised each July since 2020; a person held by a county on local charges is the sheriff's record, found through the Utah county pages.
The second route is the UDC VINE Service, a free automated line at 1-877-884-8463 or vinelink.com that tells a caller, by the inmate's name or offender number, whether the person is in custody and whether a release date is set, with live operators in English and Spanish at any hour. Registration by phone or online brings a call or an email, repeated every hour for up to 48 hours or until the PIN confirms it, when an inmate is released, escapes, returns from escape, dies, has a parole release date 30 days away, or moves to a county jail, between the Salt Lake City and Gunnison sites, or to a community correctional center; registrations are anonymous, several numbers may share one PIN, and the Victim Services coordinator answers at 801-545-5658. The Attorney General's site describes the same VINE as covering prisons and jails across the state.
- Search: the UDC Offender Search for anyone now under the department, or VINE at 1-877-884-8463 by name or offender number for custody and release dates.
- Mail: since January 5, 2026, to Incarcerated Person's Name and Inmate ID, PO Box 165300, Salt Lake City, UT 84116 for the Utah State Correctional Facility or PO Box 550, Gunnison, UT 84634 for Central Utah: up to five pages on one side of 8.5 by 11 paper in a standard number 10 envelope, scanned and printed in color, originals destroyed; no postcards, greeting cards or photos, which go through Pelipost, Ameelio or Flikshop.
- Calls: through GTL's ConnectNetwork at ten cents a minute collect, prepaid or debit, 19 cents international, with questions to the Central Utah Correctional Facility at 435-528-6000.
- Money: through Access Corrections online or at 1-866-345-1884 for $6.95, at the visiting kiosks for $3 in cash or $3.95 by card, at CashPayToday stores, or by money order or cashier's check with the department's form to the Finance office, never to the prison; up to 60 percent of a deposit can go to the inmate's debts.
Written by SearchSystems.net from Utah's own systems: the Utah Department of Corrections Offender Search, the department's Victim Notification Services page, the department's Communication page, the department's Financial Account Management page, the department's Visitation Information page, the department's Correctional Facility Standards page, the Utah Attorney General's offender registry and VINE page, each read on October 14, 2026 by the SearchSystems editorial team.
Mail: the January 5, 2026 system
On January 5, 2026 the department moved all personal, non legal mail from a third party service to its own processing centers. A letter is addressed to the incarcerated person's name and inmate ID at PO Box 165300, Salt Lake City, UT 84116 for the Utah State Correctional Facility or PO Box 550, Gunnison, UT 84634 for the Central Utah Correctional Facility, where it is scanned and a copy delivered; outgoing mail still leaves by the Postal Service as before.
The mailroom processes no more than five pages per mailing and denies anything longer, with a denial slip to the inmate and the envelope back to the sender; letters are typed or handwritten on one side of 8.5 by 11 inch paper, in a standard number 10 envelope of 4 by 9.5 inches and no other size; postcards, greeting cards and the like are not permitted, though a photocopy of one on the right paper is; photographs go only through Pelipost, Ameelio or Flikshop; everything is scanned and printed in color, folded, stapled or taped and delivered to the housing unit, with the originals destroyed after scanning and the scans kept 30 days.
Prohibited are glitter, rhinestones, stickers and glued items, wax paper, shaped cutouts, tiny papers and sticky notes, crystals, tokens, coins, toys and keychains, blank envelopes, paper and stamps, newspaper clippings, stapled items, books, booklets and anything with a spine, thick, electronic, fold out, 3D or oversized cards, official documents and anything the sender wants back, such as a birth certificate or Social Security card, legal mail, bulk mail, and money in any form, all returned to the sender.
Attorneys send privileged legal mail directly to the facility, under a new system the department announced for June 1, and public legal, government and business correspondence from courts, agencies, attorneys' offices, the Attorney General, Congress, embassies, the Department of Justice, governors, legislators, schools, banks and police in official capacity goes directly to the facility at the same box numbers, subject to search and denied if it proves to be from friends or family.
Calls and the two facilities
The phone system at the Utah State Correctional Facility in Salt Lake City and the Central Utah Correctional Facility in Gunnison is Global Tel Link's, at $0.10 a minute plus tax for every interstate, local and intrastate call whether collect, debit, prepaid or AdvancePay, and $0.19 for international calls on debit or prepaid; family accounts are set up at ConnectNetwork, and questions about the inmate telephone system go to the Central Utah Correctional Facility at 435-528-6000.
The Utah Correctional Standards, in force since July 1, 2020 and rewritten in 2021 into one volume for secure facilities, prisons and contract county jails, and one for community correctional centers, with the fiscal 2027 editions posted, grew out of a 2008 legislative audit of contract county facilities and are public under the Government Records Access and Management Act.
Money: Access Corrections, the kiosks and the deductions
Inmates may hold no money, so each has an account opened on arrival, fed mostly by family and prison jobs and spent at the weekly commissary on food, hygiene items, clothing, stamped envelopes and paper by housing unit and privilege level; the department warns in capitals not to send funds to Pigeonly in Las Vegas. A money order or cashier's check goes with the department's form to the Finance office, never to the prison; Access Corrections takes deposits by phone at 1-866-345-1884 or online at AccessCorrections.com for a $6.95 fee, at the kiosks at the main visiting entrances of both prisons in business hours for $3 in cash or $3.95 by card, with the inmate's full name and offender number, and through CashPayToday walk in locations.
Deductions come first: medical copays for visits, prescriptions, glasses and dentures, posted weekly, fines and child support, which is taken from prison wages; an inmate with unpaid debts may lose up to 60 percent of every deposit until they are paid, never below a $15 balance, and an Office of Recovery Services lien or garnishment takes money down to a $5 balance, with no service denied for inability to pay. Accounting staff will confirm that a money order arrived if the caller knows the sender and amount, but never the balance, the debts, who else deposits or where money goes out; a financial record is a private record under Utah Code 63G-2 and is released only to someone with a power of attorney or a notarized release from the inmate dated within 90 days.
Books come only through the commissary from the vendor, magazines by a subscription form the publisher mails directly, against a posted banned publications list, with Inmate Property at 801-522-7771 or 801-522-7772.
Visiting: the application, the appointment and the photo
Visitors must be approved and must make an appointment, and the department says email is its main channel, since visiting staff may not answer the phone and will not confirm a time by phone on the day; a response to an application or a request comes by email. When read, the department reported a backlog with determinations taking about two months against a normal six to eight weeks, and a lockdown at both prisons with visits resumed in some housing units, Currant, Green, Bear 3 and 4 and the women's Dell at the Utah State Correctional Facility and Elm, Fir and Gale at Central Utah, and suspended elsewhere.
Visitors arrive 30 minutes early for an in person visit and early for a video visit, 15 minutes by one passage of the page and 10 by another, check the visiting calendar for the housing unit's day and time, and apply on the paper forms or the online visiting application; the rules apply whether the person is at the Utah State Correctional Facility, Central Utah or a contract county jail. From August 1, 2026 an eligible inmate in the main visiting room, not restricted to barrier or video visits, may have one family style photograph taken every 12 months, requested at the visiting desk before the visit with the offender's name and number, the visitor's name and an email address; the inmate wears a plain white T-shirt or the state uniform shirt and sits in the center, one hand on the shoulder is the most contact allowed, staff take one verification photo and one family photo without previews or retakes, and the picture is emailed to the address given.
Reading a Utah result
An Offender Search record means the department supervises the person, in Salt Lake City, Gunnison, a contract jail or the community; someone awaiting trial in a county jail is not there, and VINE, which covers jails too, is the way to track custody. The box number depends on the prison, the letter stops at five pages, the deposit loses up to 60 percent to debts, and the visit waits about two months for approval and then on an emailed appointment.
Questions about finding an inmate in Utah
Related Utah records
The search is one of the Utah records this site covers: the Utah arrest records guide explains what a booking makes public, the court records guide covers the courts' Xchange system, the sex offender registry guide covers the department's registry, and the Utah county pages list each sheriff and jail.
