Essex County Jail Inmate Lookup

Essex County Jail Overview

Essex County Jail is operated by the Essex County Sheriff's Office, headed by Sheriff David Reynolds. The facility is at 702 Stowersville Road in Lewis and serves as Essex County's primary local jail for adult men and women age 18 and older. The Sheriff's corrections material says the Sheriff is constitutionally required to maintain the county jail and that the facility holds both sentenced and unsentenced people.

The jail population includes people awaiting arraignment, people held while a criminal case is pending, people serving local jail sentences of up to one year, parole violators, state-ready transfers, boarded-in local inmates, and federal detainees held under intergovernmental arrangements. A person sentenced to more than one year is not normally kept in the county jail for the full sentence. The Sheriff's corrections page says transfer to the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision is arranged after a longer state-prison sentence.

The official Sheriff's corrections page shows the local jail service paths for visits, bail, deposits, care packages, phone service, messaging, and video visits. The Sheriff's corrections page is the source for this facility image and the service links used by the jail:

Those service links are important because Essex County does not appear to publish a public name-by-name jail roster on the official Sheriff or county pages reviewed.

Essex County Jail Capacity and Population

The 2022 jail accreditation report lists a maximum facility capacity of 126 and describes five inmate housing units, with direct and dormitory housing. The same report lists 59 full-time correction officers at the time of the March 2022 assessment, four male housing units, one female housing unit, no specialty housing units, and no existing variances.

Recent population sources show a smaller daily count than the rated maximum. The Sheriff's 2025 annual report reported an average daily population of 57, including an average local population of 45 and an average federal population of 12. The DCJS/SCOC monthly jail population report prepared June 1, 2026 reported a May 2026 Essex County Jail census of 61 and an in-house count of 65, including 10 federal in-house detainees.

How to Look Up an Inmate at Essex County Jail

No official public Essex County Jail online roster, recent-bookings feed, or mugshot gallery was located on the Sheriff's Office or county government pages reviewed. Current local custody questions should start with the jail phone route and the Sheriff's linked VINELink New York custody-notification route. Court records, FOIL requests, DOCCS, BOP, and ICE are fallbacks for different custody levels.

1. Call Essex County Jail or the Sheriff's Office at 518-873-6970 with the person's full name, date of birth if known, arrest date, and arresting agency.
2. Check VINELink New York for custody status or notification registration. Treat VINE as a notification tool, not a complete county roster.
3. Search New York Courts WebCriminal if the question is about charges, next court date, court, or docket number after an arrest.
4. Use the DOCCS incarcerated lookup if the person has been sentenced to more than one year or transferred to state prison.
5. Use the BOP inmate locator for federal sentenced custody and the ICE detainee locator for immigration detention searches.
6. Submit a written Essex County FOIL request for booking, commitment, discharge, incident, or booking-photo records that are not available online.

Essex County Jail Address and Contact

The jail and Sheriff's Office are located at the Public Safety Building in Lewis. The Sheriff's homepage lists the same Stowersville Road location and gives 518-873-6970 as the main phone. The visitation rules give 518-873-6950 for visitation scheduling help. Because custody status, releases, transfers, holds, and visit access can change quickly, call before traveling or making a payment.

For written public-record requests, Essex County directs FOIL requests to County Attorney Dan Manning. Requests may be sent to Essex County FOIL by email at foil@essexcountyny.gov, by fax at 518-873-3894, or by mail to the County Attorney's Office, 7551 Court Street, P.O. Box 217, Elizabethtown, NY 12932. A request should identify the Essex County Sheriff's Office or Essex County Jail as the agency likely to hold the record.

Visiting Someone at Essex County Jail

Essex County Jail non-professional visits are scheduled for weekends. The visitation rules state that each incarcerated person is entitled to two hours of contact visitation per week, one hour per session, once per day. Scheduling is handled through Picktime, and the rules say scheduling opens on Wednesdays for weekend visits. Pre-registered visitors are guaranteed their selected time, while walk-in visitors do not receive priority until scheduled visitors have been processed.

The Sheriff's Picktime booking page is the official online scheduling route for Essex County Jail visits:

Visitors should arrive 30 minutes before the scheduled visit for processing. Arrival later than 15 minutes before the visit period may result in denial. Adults need official photo identification with a signature. Children under 18 must be accompanied by a parent or legal guardian and must have proper documentation, such as a birth certificate when visiting an incarcerated parent or guardian.

Mail, Phone, and Money at Essex County Jail

The Sheriff's corrections page links several official service providers. Access Corrections is linked for deposits, MyCarePack for care packages, GettingOut / ViaPath for electronic messaging and video visits, ConnectNetwork / GTL for telephone service, and GovPayNet / AllPaid for online bail using PLC Code 1995. The visitation rules also say visitors may leave money through the jail lobby kiosk.

Specific Essex County fee amounts for deposits, calls, video visits, messages, and care packages were not located in the official local pages reviewed. Vendor portals may display fees before payment. Confirm the person's custody status, name spelling, and facility before sending money or ordering packages.

Booking and Intake at Essex County Jail

Local intake details are visible through the accreditation and annual reports. The accreditation team toured the booking room, inmate intake area, property room, medical area, control room, kitchen, programs area, and housing units. The report described the intake area and property room as organized and neat. The 2025 annual report gives operational totals that show the scale of intake and movement through the jail: 361 bookings, 337 releases, 84 pre-arraignment holds, 468 inmate transports, and 40,521 transport miles.

After an arrest in Essex County, jail staff verify the authority to hold the person, identify the person, inventory property, conduct intake processing, and make a classification or housing decision. The jail has direct and dormitory housing and holds adult men and women. Booking photos and fingerprints are ordinary law-enforcement intake steps, but no official public Essex County Jail mugshot gallery was located, so a booking-photo request should go through FOIL and any sealing or privacy review.

Release or transfer can follow a court order, bail, sentence completion, parole or warrant action, federal action, immigration custody, or transfer to DOCCS after a longer sentence. A person may appear in court records even when no longer physically housed at the jail.

About Essex County Jail

The Essex County Sheriff's Office was established in 1799, and the jail is part of the county public-safety operation in Lewis near I-87 Exit 32. Official directions say travelers from the north should take Exit 32 off I-87, turn right onto Stowersville Road, and look for the Public Safety Building about one-quarter mile on the left. Travelers from the south use the same exit, turn left onto Stowersville Road, and continue about one-quarter mile.

The 2025 annual report describes education, substance-abuse counseling, mental-health services, religious services, medically assisted treatment, and jail programming. St. Joseph's Addiction Treatment and Recovery had 1,205 total sessions, including 339 one-on-one sessions and 864 group-session attendance. Adult education had 75 enrollees, 3 high-school diploma equivalency certificates, and 2,583 hours of programs and education.

Conditions reporting in the 2022 accreditation assessment was favorable. The team described the facility as clean and quiet, said housing units appeared successfully managed, noted that kitchen and food preparation areas were clean, and recommended initial accreditation. The 2026 HALT Act report posted by the Sheriff reported zero segregated confinement in the posted categories.