Terms of Service

1. Agreement to These Terms

By using jailinmatesearches.org/ (the "Site"), you agree to be bound by these Terms of Service ("Terms"). If you don't agree, please don't use the Site. These Terms form a legally binding agreement between you and the publisher of jailinmatesearches.org/ ("we," "us," "our").

Read these Terms alongside our Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy, and Disclaimer.

2. About This Site

jailinmatesearches.org/ is an independent informational directory of U.S. county jails, sheriff's offices, state Departments of Corrections, the BOP, U.S. Marshals Service holding facilities, and ICE detention centers across all 50 states. We are not a sheriff's office, a jail, a court, a CRA, a bail bondsman, an attorney, a commissary or inmate-communications vendor, or any government agency.

3. FCRA — Important Notice

4. Eligibility

The Site is intended for general use by adults conducting lawful research. We do not knowingly direct content to children under 13 and we comply with the federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), 15 U.S.C. §§6501–6506.

5. Permitted Use

You may use the Site for personal, professional, journalistic, academic, and lawful research purposes — finding a family member who's been arrested, scheduling a visit, locating an inmate for an attorney, registering for victim notification through VINELink, conducting due diligence on a specific public corrections facility, or similar uses. You may share links to our pages in personal correspondence, on social media, or in professional communications. Journalists, researchers, and legal professionals may quote short excerpts under fair use, with attribution to jailinmatesearches.org/ and a link back to the source page.

6. Prohibited Use

• Using the Site in violation of any applicable federal, state, or local law
• Any “permissible purpose” use under the Fair Credit Reporting Act without operating as a licensed CRA
• Stalking, harassment, intimidation, threats, or interference with victims of crime — federal stalking statute 18 U.S.C. § 2261A and state analogues
• Witness intimidation — federal 18 U.S.C. § 1512
• Doxing — publishing personal information to enable harassment
• Identity theft — federal 18 U.S.C. § 1028
• Mugshot-extortion or pay-to-remove operations
• Use of inmate-locator data to facilitate escape, smuggling of contraband, or any other detention-facility offence
• Filing false police reports based on information from this site
• Practising law, providing background-check services, or operating as a bail bondsman without proper licensure
• Scraping, harvesting, or systematically extracting content from the Site for resale, republication, or to power a competing background-check service
• Using automated tools to send a high volume of requests that interferes with normal Site operation
• Attempting to gain unauthorised access to the Site, our systems, or any account or data — also an offence under the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. §1030
• Introducing malware, viruses, trojans, worms, or any other malicious code

7. Intellectual Property

All content on the Site — text, layout, design, graphics, logos, organisation, and code — is owned by us, licensed to us, or used with permission, and is protected by United States copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property law.

You may view and print pages for personal or professional reference. You may not copy substantial parts of the Site, reproduce our editorial structure, or republish content commercially without our prior written permission.

Names of sheriff’s offices, jails, state DOCs, federal agencies (BOP, USMS, ICE, FBI), VINELink, and commercial vendors (JPay, Securus, GTL/ViaPath, Access Corrections, Pigeonly) belong to the relevant body. Our use is for the practical purpose of identifying the agency or vendor each page covers and does not imply sponsorship, endorsement, or affiliation.

8. User-Submitted Content

If you submit content to us — a correction report, feedback, dial-test failure, or comment — you confirm that you own it or have the right to share it, that it does not infringe anyone else’s rights, that it is not defamatory, threatening, harassing, obscene, or unlawful, and that it does not contain confidential or restricted information. You give us a non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to use the submission for the purpose of operating and improving the Site.

9. Third-Party Links and Services

The Site links extensively to U.S. sheriff’s offices, jails, state DOCs, the BOP, U.S. Marshals Service, ICE Online Detainee Locator, VINELink, court systems, PACER, and commissary/phone/messaging vendors. We have no control over those sites and cannot guarantee their availability, accuracy, security, or accessibility. A link from us is not an endorsement beyond the specific information we are pointing to.

10. Advertising Disclosure

The Site is funded by display advertising. Advertisements are served by recognised ad networks and labelled as advertising where required. We do not allow advertisers to dictate editorial content; verified sheriff’s office and DOC contacts always come first on every page. We do not accept advertising from “mugshot removal” services, FCRA-prohibited background-check products, or operations that conflict with the public-information mission of the site. Where any commercial relationship exists, it is disclosed in context per the FTC Endorsement Guides at 16 C.F.R. Part 255. Full position in our Editorial Policy and Disclaimer.

11. Changes to the Site or These Terms

We may add to, change, or remove parts of the Site at any time. We may also update these Terms from time to time. The “Last reviewed” date at the top reflects the current version. Substantive changes will be flagged on the homepage banner for at least 30 days before they take effect.

12. Disclaimer of Warranties

• The Site is provided on an “AS IS” and “AS AVAILABLE” basis
• WE DISCLAIM ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT
• We make no warranty that the Site will be uninterrupted, error-free, secure, or free from viruses or other harmful components
• We make no warranties about the accuracy, completeness, currency, reliability, or suitability of any information on the Site for any particular purpose — including any phone number, address, hours of operation, or fee schedule for any sheriff’s office, jail, court, or DOC
• We are not responsible for the operations, decisions, or treatment of inmates at any facility listed on the Site

The full operational disclaimer is on the Disclaimer page.

13. Limitation of Liability

• WE ARE NOT LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES — INCLUDING ANY HARM FLOWING FROM RELIANCE ON THIS SITE — ARISING FROM YOUR USE OF, OR INABILITY TO USE, THE SITE
• OUR TOTAL LIABILITY TO YOU FOR ANY MATTER RELATING TO THE SITE IS LIMITED TO ONE HUNDRED U.S. DOLLARS ($100), EXCEPT WHERE A HIGHER AMOUNT IS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW

14. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify and hold us harmless from any claims, losses, costs, or expenses (including reasonable attorneys’ fees) arising from your breach of these Terms — including any FCRA-prohibited use, stalking, harassment, doxing, mugshot extortion, or any infringement of any third-party right through your use of the Site. This clause does not apply to consumers using the Site for personal, non-commercial purposes except where the loss arises directly from a deliberate or reckless breach.

15. Suspension and Termination

We may suspend or restrict your access to the Site without notice if you breach these Terms in a material way, your use causes a security risk or operational problem, we are required to do so by law or court order, or we discontinue all or part of the Site. You may stop using the Site at any time.

16. Dispute Resolution

If a dispute arises out of these Terms or your use of the Site, please contact us first at info@jailinmatesearches.org with subject line “Dispute resolution” so we can try to resolve the matter informally. We commit to a good-faith response within 30 days.

If we cannot resolve the dispute informally, you and we agree to binding individual arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) under its Consumer Arbitration Rules, except that:

• Either party may bring an individual claim in small-claims court if it qualifies, instead of arbitration
• Either party may seek injunctive or other equitable relief in court for intellectual-property infringement
• The arbitration will take place in Delaware, or, by agreement of the parties, in the state where you reside
• Class-action waiver: arbitration will be conducted on an individual basis only — no class actions, class arbitrations, or representative proceedings

AAA Consumer Arbitration Rules: adr.org/Rules.

17. Governing Law and Jurisdiction

These Terms and any dispute arising under them are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, without regard to its conflict-of-laws principles. For any matter that is not subject to arbitration under Section 16, the courts of New Castle County, Delaware (and the federal courts located in the District of Delaware) have exclusive jurisdiction, except that:

• If you are a consumer in another U.S. state, nothing in these Terms deprives you of the protections of mandatory state consumer law in your state of residence
• If you are a consumer outside the U.S., you may have rights to bring proceedings in your jurisdiction of residence under applicable consumer-protection law

18. General Provisions

Entire agreement. These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, Cookie Policy, and Disclaimer, set out the entire agreement between you and us in relation to the Site.

Severability. If any provision is unenforceable, the rest continues in full force.

No waiver. Our failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of our right to enforce it later.

Assignment. You may not transfer your rights or obligations without our written consent. We may transfer ours to a successor in business as part of a corporate restructuring.

Force majeure. We are not liable for delays or failures caused by events outside our reasonable control.

19. Contact

For any question about these Terms, email info@jailinmatesearches.org with the subject line “Terms inquiry.”