# Find out the day they move

The BOP (the federal Bureau of Prisons) publishes where every federal inmate is and when they are due out. It does not tell you when that changes. You have to keep checking, and most people find out about a transfer days late, from a phone call that stopped coming.

Put in a register number and I check the locator once a day, every morning. If the facility changes, if the projected release date moves, or if the release date lands, you get one email. If nothing changed, you hear nothing.

Once a day
The register number

## Four things, and nothing else

- **A transfer.** The facility on the record changed. This is the one people care about, and it is the one nobody tells you.
- **A projected release date that moved.** Earlier or later, and the email says which.
- **A release.** The date the Bureau recorded them as out.
- **A record that stopped answering.** Rare, usually the Bureau's system rather than the person, and the email says so plainly instead of scaring you.

Name, age and the rest of it move around in the Bureau's data for reasons that have nothing to do with anybody's situation, so I do not email you about those.

## What this is not

- **Not inside information.** This is the same public locator anybody can load at bop.gov. I have no line into the Bureau and no view of anybody's case.
- **Not fast.** The locator is usually the last thing updated, not the first. Somebody can be on a bus for two days before the record catches up. If they are already gone and the record still says otherwise, the record is what is wrong.
- **Not a why.** The Bureau publishes where. It does not publish why, and a transfer alone tells you nothing about whether something happened.
- **Not a way to find somebody.** You need the register number already. There is no name search here on purpose.

A projected release date is an estimate the Bureau revises, sometimes by months, and FSA credits (time off earned through programming) move it around more than anything else. Do not book a flight on it.

## The cost — Free, and one email at a time

No account needed. One address can track up to 10 people. Every email has a link that changes the list or stops it, one click, no sign-in and no survey.

**Need help with this? Just ask.**

These pages cover the general rules. Your situation has details they don't. Email me a question. **Answers are free** , and "you don't need to pay anyone for this" is my most common answer.

[josh@federalprisondude.com](mailto:josh@federalprisondude.com?subject=Inmate%20tracker%20question)

I answer in the order received, usually within a couple of days. I have a day job. If your situation genuinely needs more than an email, I take a limited number of consults, so say so and we'll work it out.