York County PA Prison (ICE)

York County Prison in Pennsylvania is unusual among county facilities because it holds both people in county custody and immigration detainees held for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). For families, that dual role means the rules blend county-jail practices with ICE detention procedures, and understanding how visits, mail, money, and detainee information work here is essential to staying in contact. This guide brings those essentials together for both county inmates and ICE detainees held at York.

About York County Prison and its ICE role

York County Prison is a high-security county jail in York, Pennsylvania, that has long served as a contract detention facility for ICE alongside its county population, holding people in both immigration and criminal proceedings under the same roof. That dual mission changes what a family experiences: an ICE detainee's case is a federal immigration matter with its own timeline and rules, while a county inmate is moving through the local court system. The facility's core practices — visits, mail, and money — apply in similar ways to both groups, but the underlying case is what determines what happens next.

Every person held at York, whether in county or ICE custody, is identified by an inmate ID that is required for visits, mail, and deposits. For county inmates, our guide on how to find someone in jail or prison explains how to trace a person through local records, and you can look them up by name on AllRecentArrests.us for booking details. For ICE detainees, the ICE online detainee locator is the authoritative federal source, and the York detainee information line at (717) 840-7253 (8 a.m. to 4 p.m.) is where you confirm someone's presence and status at the facility.

Visitation process and timings

Visiting at York County Prison is strictly limited: every approved visitor is allowed one 60-minute visit per week, and all visitors must first be submitted to and approved for the person's visitor list before they will be admitted. You should plan on arriving at least 45 minutes before your scheduled visit time so you can be processed appropriately through security, and every visitor must present a valid photo identification and expect inspection. Visitors under 18 must be accompanied by a guardian, and the facility can deny entry for dress-code or ID issues, so preparing carefully before you drive out matters.

Because the one-hour weekly window is short and the security process takes time, planning ahead is essential. Our complete prison visitation guide covers getting approved, dress codes, and what to expect at the checkpoint. For ICE detainees, families sometimes also need to coordinate with the detainee's immigration attorney about attorney visits, which follow separate legal-visitor procedures. Always confirm current visiting rules with the facility before you travel, since a wasted trip to York is a hard lesson at a facility with such a limited visiting window.

How to send money to an inmate or detainee

York accepts several ways to fund a person's commissary account. You can send money by money order, check, or cash, and visitors can also deposit money directly into the person's account at the prison's administrative office during business hours. Whatever method you use, include the person's full name and inmate ID so the funds land on the right account, and follow the facility's current guidance on what kinds of checks and money orders are accepted, since restrictions can change. That balance is what the person uses for hygiene items, phone time, and commissary purchases.

Because rules vary by facility and can change, it pays to confirm the current deposit methods before mailing anything valuable. Our overview of how to send money to an inmate compares deposit options and posting times generally, and our explainer on how prison commissary works shows what a funded account buys inside. Sending a slightly larger amount less frequently usually beats many small deposits that each carry a fee.

Mail, care packages, and phone calls

All incoming mail at York is inspected for contraband, and no packages are permitted without prior approval from the correction facility administration. Address mail to the person's full name, inmate ID, and 3400 Concord Road, York, PA 17402-9007, keep the contents plain, and avoid anything that could be treated as contraband. Legal mail from an attorney or a court is handled separately and more protectively, so mark it clearly and keep it distinct from personal correspondence. Our breakdown of how to send mail to an inmate covers the address format and common rejection triggers.

Phone service runs through the facility's provider, and as with every prison phone system the incarcerated person places the call to you, so the practical first step is to set up and fund a prepaid account tied to your number. Under the FCC rate caps that took effect in 2026, per-minute rates have dropped sharply for both criminal and immigration detention, and our guide to calling an inmate explains account setup and cost control. For ICE detainees, calls to an immigration attorney are especially important and are typically handled as legal calls when properly arranged.

Special considerations for ICE detainees

Families of ICE detainees face a different landscape from those with a loved one in criminal custody. Immigration proceedings can move quickly, transfers to other detention facilities can happen with little notice, and reaching an experienced immigration attorney early is often the single most important step. Legal calls and attorney visits follow their own procedures at York, and the facility's detainee information line at (717) 840-7253 during business hours is where to start when you need current information about a detainee's status.

Practical support — steady contact, funded phone and commissary, and help coordinating with counsel — is often what a family can most usefully offer during detention. Keep the person's A-number (alien registration number), the York inmate ID, current housing information, and any court dates written down, because a missing number is behind most of the delays families run into when trying to reach an ICE detainee or their attorney. If your loved one is transferred to another ICE facility, the ICE detainee locator is the tool to find them at their new location.

Legal mail, emergencies, and avoiding scams

Legal or privileged mail from an attorney or a court is handled separately from ordinary correspondence and is generally opened only in the incarcerated person's presence, so keep legal documents out of personal letters and mark them properly. For emergencies such as a death, serious illness, or birth in the family, the reliable route is to call the facility and ask how to get an urgent message to the person or their case manager, rather than trying to reach them directly, and keeping the inmate ID handy makes that call go faster. If you are worried about a loved one's medical care, mental health, or safety inside, contact the facility's staff directly, explain the situation clearly, and keep a written record of who you spoke with and when.

Be cautious, too, about where you get information and send money. The York County Prison inmate search and the department's named deposit vendors are the authoritative channels, so paying an unfamiliar third-party site to "locate" a person or forward a deposit is a common way families lose money for something the state provides directly. When a rule you read online conflicts with what the facility tells you, trust the facility, and confirm anything important by calling (717) 840-7580 or the specific institution before you act on it. A little skepticism about paid third-party services protects both your wallet and your loved one's account balance across the length of a sentence.

Working with an immigration attorney at York

For ICE detainees, connecting quickly with an experienced immigration attorney is often the most consequential thing a family can do. Attorney visits and legal calls at York follow separate procedures from social visits, and an attorney familiar with York can navigate them efficiently. Because immigration cases can move on their own timeline — hearings, bond motions, and transfers — keeping the person's A-number, the York inmate ID, and any court information written down means you can hand a clean, complete picture to any lawyer who steps in.

Bond in immigration cases is different from criminal bail: an immigration judge sets the amount, and specific rules govern how it is posted. Working with an attorney who knows the process protects both the person's case and your money, and it prevents the kind of missteps that can happen when a family tries to navigate the system alone. Even if hiring counsel is difficult, many nonprofit legal-services groups take immigration cases at reduced or no cost, and reaching out to one early is worthwhile.

Steady contact matters through detention as much as through incarceration. A predictable call, a JailATM-style message where available, and a well-formatted letter keep the person connected to family through a stressful stretch, and they help the attorney build the kind of case that requires evidence of community ties and support.

What the "(ICE)" in this record's name means — and how to check it

York County Prison held federal immigration detainees for many years under an arrangement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is why the designation appears in this record's name. ICE inspection records for the facility exist from 2012, 2017 and 2019. Arrangements of this kind are contractual and they change, so the name in a directory is not evidence of current status. ICE publishes its own list of detention facilities and its facility inspection records, and that list — not this name — is the authoritative source for whether immigration detainees are held at any given site today. If you are looking for someone in immigration custody, check ICE's detainee locator rather than the county.

If you are trying to reach someone in custody, these are the facilities that actually hold people:

• ICE's published detention facility list

Someone taken to hospital from one of those facilities remains in custody the whole time, and remains booked there. So the place to ask about them is the facility holding them, not the hospital — the hospital will not confirm a patient in custody, and the custody record does not move when the person does.

How much room York County Prison has

The federal jail census gives three different capacity figures for York County Prison, and the gaps between them are the useful part. In its 2019 count the facility had a design capacity of 2,573 and a rated capacity of 2,373. Its highest population during that reporting year was 2,073. The design figure is what the building was drawn for, the rated figure is what the jurisdiction says it can hold, and the peak is what actually happened.

That peak sits within the design figure, which suggests the jail was not routinely operating beyond the population it was built for during that year. Short-term pressure still happens — a single busy weekend can strain intake and medical screening without moving an annual number.

The same count recorded 1,745 adult men and 257 adult women held at the facility. A jail holding both means separate housing, and often separate visiting and program schedules, inside one building — which is a common reason two people booked the same day end up on different routines.

These are census figures for 2019, so they describe that year rather than today. Treat them as the scale of the facility and confirm anything current with the sheriff's office.

Who was held at York County Prison

On the day of the 2019 federal jail census, York County Prison held 2,002 adults: 1,745 men and 257 women.

Women were 13% of that count. Jails typically run separate housing for men and women, and the smaller side of the population often means fewer program places, fewer visiting slots and less movement — a practical disadvantage that rarely gets stated anywhere.

The census also recorded this as a facility that holds people beyond 72 hours, rather than a short-term lockup that transfers everyone onward almost immediately. That matters for planning: it means someone can serve a full short sentence here, and that mail, deposits and visiting are worth setting up rather than waiting out.

These are census figures for a single reporting year and are now several years old. Treat the split as the shape of the population rather than a current count.

How York County Prison compares with other jails in Pennsylvania

The 2019 federal jail census counted 72 jails in Pennsylvania. Ranked by rated capacity, York County Prison was the 3rd largest of them, at 2,373 beds.

That puts it among the largest jails in the state, and size changes the experience in ways worth anticipating. Big jails run more formalised systems — scheduled visiting slots that fill, classification that moves people between units, and phone and deposit vendors handling enough volume that the process is automated rather than personal. You will generally get further by following the published procedure exactly than by asking staff to make an exception.

This ranking covers only the jails the census counted, and reflects that one reporting year. It is a guide to scale, not a current league table.

What York County Prison is set up to do

The federal jail census records each facility's designated functions — the roles it is set up and authorised to perform. In its 2019 count, York County Prison was recorded as holding adults awaiting trial or serving a sentence, holding people awaiting return to probation or parole custody and running a work release program.

Equally useful is what it is not designated as: acting as a reception or intake centre for other facilities, holding juveniles, operating as a dedicated medical facility, operating as a dedicated mental health facility and holding people in protective custody. That is a statement about the facility's formal role, not about the services inside it — a jail without a dedicated medical or treatment designation can still provide on-site care, but specialised needs are more likely to be met by transporting someone out to a hospital or a specialist facility. If that applies to your family member, ask early who provides the care and where.

These designations come from the 2019 census, so treat them as the facility's established role rather than a current service list.

How York County Prison is inspected

Every county correctional institution in Pennsylvania is inspected by the Department of Corrections' Office of County Inspections and Services, which runs an independent statewide field inspection programme covering written policies, the documentation behind them, and the physical plant. The requirement comes from 37 Pa. Code Chapter 95.

• A facility is inspected at least every 12 months, and at most every 24 months.
• The regulations run to 48 essential standards and 94 non-essential standards.
• A violation of an essential standard produces a citation; a non-essential one produces a deficiency.

Full compliance waives the next annual inspection and moves a jail to a two-yearly cycle, so the inspection interval itself is a signal about past performance.

This matters more than most oversight machinery, because an inspection report is a document you can ask for. If you have a concern about conditions that the jail itself will not address — sanitation, medical access, overcrowding, safety — asking whether the facility's most recent inspection raised it, and requesting that report, is a concrete step that carries more weight than a phone complaint. Reports are generally public records.

Your first steps

If someone you love has just been booked into York County Prison, focus first on the essentials: confirm they are in custody by calling (717) 840-7253 for detainees or (717) 840-7580 for general information, write down their inmate ID (and A-number if it is an ICE case), get approved to visit and plan around the one-hour weekly window, and set up a phone account and a commissary deposit so contact is possible. For ICE detainees, contact an immigration attorney early and use ICE's online detainee locator alongside the facility's own information. Rely on the facility's own information rather than paid third-party sites for anything that matters.