Wyoming Department of Corrections (WY DOC)

The Wyoming Department of Corrections (WDOC) headquarters at 1934 Wyott Drive, Suite 100, in Cheyenne is the state agency that runs all adult prison facilities in Wyoming. As with Rhode Island's RI DOC, the Wyoming DOC's central office in Cheyenne is an administrative headquarters — not an inmate-holding facility. WDOC operates several distinct correctional institutions across the state including the Wyoming State Penitentiary in Rawlins (high-custody men, under Warden Shawn Hobson), the Wyoming Medium Correctional Institution in Torrington (opened 2010 as intake center for men not sentenced to death, under Warden Seth Norris), plus the Wyoming Honor Farm in Riverton, the Wyoming Honor Conservation Camp and Boot Camp in Newcastle, and the Wyoming Women's Center in Lusk. This guide clarifies that the 1934 Wyott Drive Cheyenne address is administrative, explains WDOC's institutional structure, and covers how to find and support a loved one at one of Wyoming's operating prisons.

The 1934 Wyott Drive HQ vs. WDOC's operating institutions

The 1934 Wyott Drive, Suite 100 address in Cheyenne is the Wyoming Department of Corrections central office — the administrative headquarters where department leadership, policy, records administration, budget, and other central functions are housed. No inmates are held at this address. The men and women in WDOC custody are held at the department's operating institutions distributed across the state.

If you have been directed to WDOC HQ in Cheyenne or told your loved one is in Wyoming DOC custody, the practical question is which specific institution they are at, since each has its own address, warden, visiting rules, mail routing, and specific programs. Do not send inmate mail, deposits, or visit-scheduling questions to the HQ address — those go to the specific institution.

Wyoming State Penitentiary (Rawlins): the high-custody institution

The Wyoming State Penitentiary at 2900 S. Higley Road, Rawlins, WY 82301-0400 is WDOC's high-custody institution for men. Under Warden Shawn Hobson, the Penitentiary houses both general-population high-custody men and administrative-segregation populations. It is the state's principal maximum-security prison and historically the site where Wyoming has managed its most restrictive custody assignments.

Because the Penitentiary is a high-custody facility, visiting rules, movement, and property access are more restrictive than at Wyoming's lower-custody institutions. Family members visiting men at the Penitentiary should expect longer processing times, tighter dress-code enforcement, and possible non-contact visits depending on the incarcerated person's custody status. Confirm current visiting hours, procedures, and any operational restrictions with the institution before traveling to Rawlins — the drive from Cheyenne (roughly 150 miles west on I-80) is significant, and Rawlins itself is a small town with limited overnight accommodations.

Wyoming Medium Correctional Institution (Torrington): intake center

The Wyoming Medium Correctional Institution at 7076 Road 55F, Torrington, WY 82240 opened in 2010 and serves as WDOC's intake center for men not sentenced to death, along with its medium-custody housing role. Under Warden Seth Norris, the Torrington facility is where most men entering Wyoming DOC custody begin their state-prison time — they are classified, medically evaluated, and screened for program needs at Torrington before being assigned to their long-term placement (which may be Torrington itself, the Penitentiary at Rawlins, one of the Honor facilities, or another institution based on classification).

For families with a loved one newly sentenced to Wyoming DOC time, the first custody stop is typically Torrington. Expect the intake phase to last several weeks and to include limited visitation and communication access while classification is underway. Once your loved one is assigned to his long-term institution, mail routing, visitation, and family-contact procedures will settle into that institution's specific patterns.

Wyoming's smaller institutions: Honor Farm, Boot Camp, Women's Center

Wyoming's other WDOC facilities serve specific custody populations:

• Wyoming Honor Farm (Riverton): Minimum-custody men in a work-focused programming environment, typically men nearing release or with strong classification profiles.
• Wyoming Honor Conservation Camp and Boot Camp (Newcastle): Minimum-custody men in conservation-focused programming, with the boot camp component providing structured discipline and rehabilitation for eligible participants.
• Wyoming Women's Center (Lusk): WDOC's centralized facility for women in state custody, holding all female sentenced state prisoners in Wyoming.

Each of these facilities has distinct programs, visiting rules, and family-contact procedures. Confirm the specific institution's details on WDOC's website at corrections.wyo.gov or by contacting the institution directly.

How to find someone in WDOC custody

Use WDOC's inmate lookup on corrections.wyo.gov to confirm the specific institution where your loved one is held. Every person in WDOC custody has a WDOC ID number assigned at intake, and that number plus the full legal name is required on every letter, deposit, and visit registration. Because Wyoming's small state population means the DOC operates a relatively small number of institutions (compared to states like California or Texas), the inmate lookup covers everyone in state adult custody without ambiguity about which system they're in.

Contacting the WDOC HQ vs. contacting the institution

The 1934 Wyott Drive HQ in Cheyenne is the right contact for policy questions, records requests, systemic complaints not resolved at the institutional level, and questions about department-wide procedures. Reach the WDOC main line at (307) 777-7208. Do not use the HQ address or phone for inmate mail, deposits, or day-to-day visit-scheduling questions — those go to the specific institution.

For urgent family emergencies involving an inmate, call the specific institution directly and ask for the chaplain's office to relay the message. Each institution publishes its own contact information on the WDOC website.

Wyoming reentry and post-release supervision

Most people completing a Wyoming DOC sentence enter Wyoming community supervision (probation or parole) rather than clean release. Understanding the specific supervision conditions attached to your loved one's sentence helps the family prepare for release. WDOC coordinates with the Wyoming Board of Parole and county-based probation officers for post-release supervision arrangements.

Our overviews of life after prison, finding work after prison, and applying for SNAP, Medicaid, and TANF after release cover practical reentry topics that apply across states, though specific Wyoming rules and resources should be verified with WDOC and Wyoming Workforce Services.

Most people under this department are supervised, not held

Alongside its five facilities the department is responsible for statewide supervision of adults on probation and parole, working through 23 field offices across the state. For most people under its authority the relevant contact is a field office rather than a prison, and those offices are spread thinly across a very large area.

The services provided here are five correctional facilities, three contracted adult community corrections placements, statewide probation and parole supervision through 23 field offices and a small enough estate that transfers are frequent and options limited. That is a clinical remit rather than a custodial one — people are here because of a medical or behavioural health need, not because this is where they are held.

Wyoming's five facilities and what the split means

Because this record is not itself a custody facility, the numbers worth knowing belong to the two that are. The most recent federal jail census, covering 2026, counted them separately:

• Four facilities holding men
• One facility holding women
• Three contracted adult community corrections placements

A five-facility system has very little slack. Placement is driven by security level and available beds rather than by geography, and with one women's facility there is no alternative destination at all for women. Community corrections placements are contracted rather than run directly, so the operator there may be a private provider even though the department remains responsible.

Those are census figures for a single reporting year and are now several years old, so treat them as the scale of each facility rather than a current count. Neither figure describes this record — this address is the hospital, and it holds no one on its own authority.

What records still exist for the Wyoming Department of Corrections

Closing a prison does not erase its statistical record. The department continues to publish pre-closure reports for this institution, including facility pages for each of the five correctional facilities, information on contracted adult community corrections placements, field office listings for probation and parole across the state and published information on statewide probation and parole supervision, which covers far more people than the five facilities do.

These are worth knowing about if you are reconstructing a timeline — confirming when someone was held here, what the conditions and population were at the time, or supporting a claim that depends on how the institution was operating. They are statistical rather than individual, so they will not contain a named person's file; for that you need a records request to the department rather than a published report.

What this department operates

The department lists 5 adult institutions. This record is the department itself rather than any one prison, so it has no beds, no visiting room and no warden of its own — which is why the practical details you need always belong to a specific institution, not to headquarters.

One women's facility for the whole of Wyoming means a woman sentenced in the state has a single destination. Wyoming is the least populous state and the tenth largest by area, so that single destination can be several hours from home.

The department operates five facilities — four holding men and one holding women — and contracts three adult community corrections placements. Knowing the list is more useful than it looks: a transfer is announced by institution name, often with no explanation of where that is or how far you will now have to travel.

That distinction matters when you are chasing an answer. Department policy sets the framework — visiting eligibility, approved vendors, grievance procedure — but the schedule, the phone number, and the person who can actually help are all at the institution holding your family member. Start by confirming which prison that is, then work with that facility directly.

How to find someone in this department's custody

The department's official search tool is the department's offender locator, at corrections.wyo.gov. The search covers people in state custody and under state supervision. Someone held before sentencing is normally in a county jail run by a sheriff, which is a separate system with its own roster. Wyoming is the least populous state in the country, so the department is small and its records are correspondingly centralised — one search generally settles the question of where someone is.

Before you travel or send anything

Whatever a directory tells you — including this one — confirm the detail that matters to you with the operating agency before acting on it. Facility names, operators, designations and even addresses change, sometimes years before public records catch up, and the cost of acting on a stale entry is a wasted journey, a returned parcel or a deposit sent to the wrong account. A single phone call the morning you travel is worth more than any amount of research the week before.

If a search for someone returns nothing at all, work through the possibilities in order before assuming the worst. They may be held by a different authority than the one you are searching — a county sheriff rather than a state department, or the reverse. They may be in transit between facilities and temporarily unlisted. The name on the record may differ from the one you use, particularly where a middle name, a suffix or a hyphenated surname is involved. Or the record may simply not have updated yet, which is common in the first day or two after an arrest or a move. An empty result is far more often a search problem than a sign that something has gone wrong.

Your first steps if a loved one is in WDOC custody

If someone you love is in Wyoming DOC custody, focus first on the essentials: use WDOC's inmate lookup at corrections.wyo.gov to confirm the specific institution where they are held (Penitentiary, Medium, Honor Farm, Boot Camp, or Women's Center) and note the WDOC ID number. Contact the specific institution for visitation, mail, and deposit procedures — those are institution-specific rather than HQ-level. Fund initial deposits through the institution's contracted deposit vendor, register your phone with the phone vendor for calls, and use the specific institution's inmate mail address rather than the HQ address. If your loved one is newly in Wyoming DOC custody, expect the intake period at Torrington to last several weeks before long-term placement is confirmed. As a release date approaches, coordinate with WDOC and any community-supervision resources to support the transition.

Wyoming's small-state DOC context

Wyoming's small state population means WDOC operates one of the smaller state DOC systems in the United States, both in overall inmate population and in number of institutions. That small scale means WDOC leadership is more directly accessible than at larger state systems, family concerns escalated to the department typically reach senior administration relatively quickly, and the specific institution wardens (Hobson at Rawlins, Norris at Torrington, and others) play meaningful direct roles in operational decisions. For families, this means direct communication with the assigned institution and, when needed, escalation to the WDOC HQ can be reasonably effective — more so than at larger state systems where similar concerns might route through many layers of administrative structure.

Wyoming's small-state advantages and limitations for families

Wyoming's small state population and small DOC footprint create both advantages and challenges for families of incarcerated people. On the advantage side: the state's five main WDOC institutions plus the Central Office in Cheyenne are relatively accessible geographically (Wyoming's total land area is large but most WDOC institutions cluster in the state's more populous eastern and central regions), leadership is more directly accessible than at large state systems, and the smaller inmate population means classification and program placement decisions can be more individualized. On the challenge side: the state's harsh weather affects travel — winter drives across Wyoming to visit family at Torrington, Rawlins, Lusk, Newcastle, or Riverton can be dangerous during blizzards and require careful planning — and Wyoming's small population base means fewer external legal services and advocacy resources than in larger states. If your loved one is in WDOC custody, factor both the advantages of small-state accessibility and the practical realities of Wyoming winter travel and rural geography into planning family contact.

Coordination between WDOC, Board of Parole, and county community corrections

Wyoming's post-release supervision system involves coordination between WDOC (which manages the incarcerated phase), the Wyoming Board of Parole (which grants parole and sets conditions for parolees), and county-based probation officers (who supervise clients on both probation and parole in the community). Understanding this multi-agency structure helps families support the release-planning process — the specific conditions of supervision, the assigned officer, and the reporting expectations all flow through these coordinated channels. As a projected release date approaches, work with your loved one to identify the specific supervision arrangements and connect with the appropriate agencies well ahead of release day.