Search Suwannee Correctional Institution Inmates

Suwannee Correctional Institution Overview

Suwannee Correctional Institution is a major state prison operated by the Florida Department of Corrections at 5964 U.S. Highway 90 in Live Oak. The agency lists the facility as an adult male institution with a capacity of 1,418. It holds sentenced felons, the population the state takes on after county jails and reception centers complete intake. This is not a county jail, and it should not be searched through the sheriff's roster.

The state lists a warden, Jared Cox, along with a warden's office email and a recruiter contact. Posted hours run from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Eastern. Satellite units include the Suwannee Annex and a work camp, with the work camp marked temporarily closed by the agency. The official FDC institution page gathers the facility's contacts, programs, and directions.

The Florida Department of Corrections runs a large system around this prison. The agency reports it operates well over a hundred facilities statewide and that its prisons hold felons convicted and sentenced to more than one year. Suwannee Correctional Institution is one of its major institutions. A person enters this system from a county jail, not off the street, which is the clearest line between the work the sheriff does and the work the state does.

The FDC page for Suwannee Correctional Institution is the official source for the warden, hours, and program list. Because this is a state prison, the lookup tool is the statewide locator, not the county jail roster used on the jail inmate records page.

Suwannee Correctional Institution Capacity and Population

The state lists the institution's capacity as 1,418 for an adult male population. A Florida Legislature profile reported a large state prison presence in the county overall, with 1,947 state prisoners physically held in county facilities on June 30, 2020. That state count is separate from the Suwannee County Jail's daily population, which runs in the low hundreds.

The contrast is stark for a rural county. The jail averages well under 200 people, while the state prisons in the county hold many times that. Both numbers are real, but they belong to different systems and different agencies, and only the jail figure is the local Suwannee County inmate population in the everyday sense.

How to Look Up an Inmate at Suwannee Correctional Institution

Use the Florida Department of Corrections offender locator, not the county roster. The state search accepts a last name, first name, or DC number, and it returns sentenced state inmates with photos. The agency refreshes the population search weekly, with release dates and location changes updated nightly, so the data is current but not instant.

1. Open the FDC inmate population search.
2. Search by last name, first name, or the six-character DC number.
3. Confirm the person is housed at Suwannee Correctional Institution.
4. Open the record for the sentence, status, and location detail.

The state search form lays out the fields and the agency's update notices in one place.

The FDC Corrections Offender Network menu also offers release, escape, and supervised-population searches. The agency warns its data can change quickly and makes no guarantee of accuracy, so confirm a location with the institution when it matters.

Suwannee Correctional Institution Address and Contact

The institution is reached at its Live Oak address and main phone. A separate chaplain line and recruiter contact are also published by the state.

Visiting Someone at Suwannee Correctional Institution

State prison visitation is different from county jail visitation. It requires approval and scheduling under the Florida Department of Corrections statewide rules, not a quick video account. The facility posts hours of 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Eastern, but approval, the visitor list, and current scheduling are governed by FDC. Confirm the current visiting process and any approval steps with the institution and the state before traveling.

Mail, Phone, and Money at Suwannee Correctional Institution

Mail, phone, and money follow state prison procedures, which differ from the county jail kiosk and collect-call setup. Use the inmate's current DC number and the state's contact-an-inmate instructions, and check the FDC deposit path rather than the county commissary vendor. The details below point to the correct state channels.

Reception and Classification

State prisoners do not arrive by street arrest. They come from county jails after sentencing and pass through state reception centers, where they are processed, tested, medically evaluated, assessed for program needs, and classified by custody and security risk. Only then are they assigned to an institution like Suwannee Correctional Institution. This is why a person can leave the county jail roster and appear in the state locator weeks later.

The classification step decides far more than the building. It sets a custody level, drives housing, and shapes which programs a person can join. Because Suwannee Correctional Institution carries close-management programming, some of its population is held at a tighter custody level than a general-population prison. That is a state determination made during reception and reviewed over time, not a county jail decision.

Programs at Suwannee Correctional Institution

The institution runs a wide set of programs, which the state groups by purpose. Education and vocational training make up a large share, and the close-management designation shows up across several academic tracks. The lists below sort the documented programs into broad groups.

Academic and library programs are the backbone, paired with vocational training meant to lead to work after release.

• Adult Basic Education, GED, and Special Education Services.
• Voluntary Literacy Program and Title I Services.
• C-Tech, Greenhouse Management, and Landscape and Turf Management.
• Library and law library access.

Behavioral, faith, and transition programs round out the list and support reentry planning.

• Chaplaincy classes and religious education.
• Thinking for a Change and Victims Impact.
• Compass 100 and Ready to Work.
• Close-management transition, substance-abuse prevention, and wellness education.

State Records and Population Contacts

Questions the locator cannot answer go to the state bureaus that keep the records, not to the county sheriff. For a population or location question about a sentenced inmate, the Bureau of Classification and Central Records is the line. For a release question, the Bureau of Admission and Release is the right office. These are statewide numbers, since the record is a state record.

About Suwannee Correctional Institution

Directions from the state place the facility about 7 miles east of Live Oak on U.S. 90, 16 miles west of Lake City, and 2 miles west of Wellborn. The state also publishes a chaplain line at (386) 963-6253 and a recruiter contact for hiring, separate from inmate-record questions. The institution sits next to its annex and a work camp that the agency lists as temporarily closed, so confirm where a person is held before a visit rather than assuming the main unit.

The prison is part of why Suwannee County hosts a large state inmate count for a rural county. That count belongs to the state, and it should not be merged with the county jail population reported by the sheriff. Keeping the two figures apart is the single most important thing to get right when reading numbers for this county.