Erie County Holding Center Inmate Search

The Five Columns, and What Each One Is For

The roster gives you exactly this and nothing more:

Column	What it is
ICN #	The Inmate Control Number. The county says it is on the person’s wristband, and it is required on mail and on every deposit.
Inmate Name	Last name first, in capitals, sometimes with a middle initial.
Date of Birth	The only way to tell two people with the same name apart, and the roster does contain repeated names.
Facility	ECHC for the Buffalo Holding Center, ECCF for the Alden correctional facility.
Booking Date	When they came into custody.

The ICN number is the one to write down. It goes on the first line of an envelope and it keys every deposit route. Everything else on this guide assumes you have it.

How to Search a Document That Has No Search

The roster is alphabetical by last name and runs to around nineteen pages. There is no filter, no sort and no lookup field.

So you use your own reader’s find function. Open the roster PDF, press Ctrl+F on Windows or Cmd+F on a Mac, and type the surname. On a phone, most PDF readers have a magnifying glass icon that does the same job.

If the surname is common, use the date of birth column to identify the right person rather than guessing from the first name.

Check the Timestamp Before You Trust It

Every page carries a footer giving the moment the file was built, in the form Created On: Monday, September 14, 2026 At: 9:10:09 am.

This matters more than it sounds. The roster is a file that gets regenerated, not a live database. Somebody booked in after the last regeneration will not be on the copy you are reading, however recently you downloaded it.

Treat it as potentially a day or two behind, and read the footer before concluding that somebody is not in custody.

Two Rows Have No Facility at All

A genuine defect worth knowing about. On the copy verified for this guide, two people had a completely blank facility column while every other row was marked ECHC or ECCF.

If that happens to the person you are looking for, you cannot tell from the roster whether they are in Buffalo or in Alden. That decides which building you drive to and which address goes on your envelope, so it is not a small gap. Ring the Holding Center on 716-858-7638 and ask which facility holds them.

What the Roster Will Not Tell You

Set expectations before you open it:

• No charges. Nothing about what somebody is accused of.
• No bail or bond amount. If you are trying to get somebody out, this document will not help you price it.
• No release date.
• No housing unit, which matters because the visiting rules work off the building rather than the unit.
• No photograph.
• No transfer history. Somebody moved between the two jails appears under a different code next time the file is built, with no note that they moved.

VINE, and What Erie Uses It For

Erie County also links to VINE, on 1-888-846-3469, but frames it under victim services rather than as a family lookup. VINE is built around custody-status notifications, so it will tell you when somebody’s status changes rather than serving as a general directory.

If what you want is an alert when somebody is released or moved, VINE is the better tool. If what you want is to know who is in custody right now and where, the roster PDF is more direct.

When the Arrest Was Hours Ago

Booking has to complete before a name reaches the roster, and then the roster has to be regenerated before you can see it. Those are two separate delays stacked on top of each other.

A person arrested on a Friday evening may not appear on a file built the following Monday morning if the paperwork was still moving. That is the document lagging, not evidence about their case. Check the footer, wait for the next build, and call the Holding Center if you need an answer sooner than the file can give you one.