Iowa's daily count for Fort Dodge and the capacity printed on its own facility page do not match, and both are official. Start with a name below and we will find them.
Find your loved one and start staying in touch - photos, letters, and calls.
There is no Fort Dodge roster. Iowa runs a single offender search for all nine of its prisons, and you narrow it to this one through the Location dropdown. What you get back is fuller than most states publish: age, offense, tentative discharge date and the latest parole board decision. Fort Dodge is also the one Iowa prison that publishes a hard capacity figure, which makes it the easiest place in the state to see how the department’s two sets of official numbers disagree.
Open Iowa’s statewide offender search and set Location to Fort Dodge Correctional Facility. You can also search with Pigeonly.
If you are not sure where your person is, leave Location on All. A statewide search tells you where they are now rather than confirming where you hope they are, and Iowa moves people between prisons often enough that it matters.
Starts With is the default and copes with a partial name.
Matches wants it exactly right.
Sounds Like finds names that sound the same and are spelled differently. This is the setting to use when you are working from a name somebody said out loud, or a surname the family has never agreed on how to spell.
Two more filters cut a long list down: sex, and County of Commitment, which is where the case came from rather than where the person is held.
Fort Dodge is the clearest example in Iowa of a discrepancy that runs through the whole system.
The facility’s own page states a capacity of 1,392, and names the population as adult male. It is the only Iowa prison publishing either figure outright.
Iowa’s Daily Statistics page, on September 9, 2026, gave Fort Dodge a count of 1,293 against a capacity of 1,162, with 75 people in medical or segregation status.
So on the same day, one official page says the prison is built for 1,392 and another says its working capacity is 1,162. Both come from the Iowa Department of Corrections and neither explains the other.
What that means for you is narrow but useful: a prison running above its working capacity is a prison that transfers people, so confirm a location before you rely on it.
Iowa attaches its own caution to any parole interview date: contact Board of Parole staff to confirm it rather than relying on the page.
If the name is right but location, offense and dates are all blank, they have almost certainly been released.
Iowa keeps released people in the database and empties those fields rather than deleting the record. It is an answer, not a fault.
Iowa’s search disclaimer says information is updated on a weekly basis and may change quickly. A different Iowa DOC page tells families a transfer appears within 24 hours of the move.
Both statements are official and they contradict each other. We are not going to choose for you.
The practical consequence is the same either way. Fort Dodge is in Webster County, a long way from most of Iowa’s population, so call 515-574-4700 and confirm before you drive.
They are still in county custody. Anyone awaiting trial or sentencing is held by a county, and this search does not reach county jails.
The spelling is off. Switch to Sounds Like.
They have been released, which is the blank record above.
They were transferred. Reset Location to All.
They are in federal custody. Iowa has no federal prisons at all, so anyone in Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) custody appears only in the BOP’s own locator.
The offender number and the exact spelling of the legal name.
At Fort Dodge in particular, the offender number does double duty. It goes on the mail routing line, and it goes on the money order that the whole state posts to this address. A deposit missing the offender name and number, plus your own name and full address, is returned to sender.
6 of 7 questions
Use Iowa's statewide offender search at doc-search.iowa.gov and set the Location dropdown to Fort Dodge Correctional Facility. There is no separate roster for this prison. If you are unsure which of the nine prisons holds them, leave Location on All and the result will tell you.
Inmate SearchBecause Iowa publishes two, and does not reconcile them. The facility page states a capacity of 1,392 adult male, the only exact figure any Iowa prison publishes. The Daily Statistics page on September 9, 2026 gave a working capacity of 1,162 with 1,293 people held. Both are official Iowa Department of Corrections figures.
Inmate SearchAlmost certainly that they have been released. Iowa keeps released people in the database and empties the location, offense and date fields rather than removing the record. It is an answer rather than a broken search, though it is worth a phone call if a release would surprise you.
Inmate SearchUse the Sounds Like name mode, which matches names pronounced the same but spelled differently. Iowa also offers Starts With, the default, which handles a partial name, and Matches for an exact one. Filtering by sex or County of Commitment narrows a common surname further.
Inmate SearchConfirm by phone first. Iowa's search disclaimer says information is updated on a weekly basis, while a separate Iowa DOC page says a transfer appears within 24 hours. Both are official and they conflict. Fort Dodge is in Webster County, so call 515-574-4700 before making the trip.
Inmate SearchTentative Discharge Date and Supervision Discharge Date. Iowa expands both abbreviations on the page itself. Treat a tentative date as exactly that, since it moves with earned credits, parole board decisions and disciplinary findings.
Inmate SearchAn arrest does not put somebody into Iowa Department of Corrections custody. People awaiting trial or sentencing are held in county jails, which run their own separate rosters. This search covers the nine state prisons and community supervision, and nothing beyond that.
Inmate SearchTwo Saturday start times, and a twelve-hour video window.
View ArticleThis prison banks the money for all nine. Yours is already here.
View ArticleSeven cents a minute, funded from a different prison entirely.
View ArticleCode 1114, and two Fort Dodge addresses that are not interchangeable.
View ArticleSearch for your loved one and start sending photos, letters, and messages today.
Search for Your Loved OneFree Inmate Search
All information on this page comes directly from official government and facility sources. How we verify information › Last verified September 9, 2026.