El Dorado County South Lake Tahoe Jail Inmate Lookup

El Dorado County South Lake Tahoe Jail Overview

El Dorado County South Lake Tahoe Jail is operated by the El Dorado County Sheriff's Office Custody Division under Sheriff Jeff Leikauf. The custody division describes two jail facilities in the county: the larger El Dorado County Placerville Jail on Forni Road and the South Lake Tahoe Facility on Al Tahoe Boulevard. The South Lake Tahoe jail is the official county jail facility for the Tahoe basin area and is not described by official county sources as a separate municipal police jail.

The facility holds adult county jail inmates connected to the Tahoe side of El Dorado County. That can include pretrial detainees, local sentenced inmates, people awaiting hearings in El Dorado Superior Court, and people booked after arrests by the Sheriff's Office, South Lake Tahoe Police, California Highway Patrol, or other agencies. Official public records reviewed for this county do not show a separate public South Lake Tahoe jail roster. The same Citizen RIMS current-inmates roster covers both county jail facilities.

The Sheriff's public pages give South Lake Tahoe Jail a published capacity of 158 inmates. They do not publish separate public security-classification tiers, housing-unit names, a public booking-counter schedule, visitor parking rules, ADA entrance details, or an accreditation statement. Those limits should be preserved in user-facing content. If a detail is not on the public page, a visitor should confirm it with the jail rather than relying on assumptions from other counties.

The Sheriff's custody page is the official source identifying both county jail facilities and their capacities.

That countywide custody page is also why South Lake Tahoe should be presented as part of the Sheriff's jail system rather than as a city police lockup.

El Dorado County South Lake Tahoe Jail Capacity and Population

South Lake Tahoe Jail has a published capacity of 158 inmates, according to the Sheriff's custody page accessed in the research on May 31, 2026. Placerville Jail adds a separate published capacity of 303 inmates plus 8 outpatient medical beds, so the combined county jail capacity is 461 beds plus the Placerville medical-bed notation. The South Lake Tahoe capacity is facility-specific; the current public roster count found during research was countywide, not Tahoe-only.

The Citizen RIMS public count endpoint returned 268 current records on May 31, 2026. That is useful as a countywide current-roster snapshot, but it should not be treated as a South Lake Tahoe headcount or a formal occupancy report. Vera's 2021 county fact sheet reported a 280-person average daily jail population, 3,745 jail admissions, and a 69% pretrial share. Those are countywide context figures that help explain the local jail population, not separate South Lake Tahoe facility metrics.

How to Look Up an Inmate at El Dorado County South Lake Tahoe Jail

Start with the official El Dorado Sheriff Citizen RIMS Incarcerated People roster. This is the countywide current-inmate roster linked from the Sheriff's "Current Inmates" quick link. It covers jail custody for both Placerville and South Lake Tahoe. The public roster shows booking number, name, booking date, arresting agency, arrest location, bail, status, and charge details after a row is opened. It does not publish public mugshots in the inspected El Dorado configuration, and it does not show a public facility or housing column.

1. Open Citizen RIMS from the Sheriff's Current Inmates link or go directly to the incarcerated-people page.
2. Search by First and Last name, or use the expanded options for start and end date filtering.
3. Compare booking number, name, booking date, arresting agency, arrest location, bail, and status.
4. Open the booking detail, then call South Lake Tahoe Jail at (530) 573-3030 if you need to confirm the person is housed at the Tahoe facility.

Tahoe-side arrests can involve South Lake Tahoe Police, CHP, the Sheriff's Office, or other agencies. The arresting agency shown on the jail roster is not always the same as the booking agency, and jail charges are not always identical to charges later filed in Superior Court. Cases handled in South Lake Tahoe court departments still remain part of El Dorado Superior Court. If the jail roster no longer shows the person, use court records, CDCR CIRIS for sentenced state-prison custody, BOP for sentenced federal custody, ICE ODLS for immigration detention, or California VINELink for custody notifications where available.

The Citizen RIMS roster is the official online access point for current El Dorado County jail custody.

Because the roster is countywide, the South Lake Tahoe phone line remains important when a user needs facility placement before traveling or sending legal mail.

El Dorado County South Lake Tahoe Jail Address and Contact

Use the South Lake Tahoe jail number for Tahoe facility questions, evening visit confirmation, and facility-placement checks that the roster does not answer. The South Lake Tahoe Sheriff's office and Records Unit are posted separately from the jail contact block. For jail custody and visiting, use the jail line. For report copies, local records requests, or subject criminal-history requests, use the Sheriff's South Lake Tahoe office and Records counter information.

Visiting Someone at El Dorado County South Lake Tahoe Jail

South Lake Tahoe in-person visiting has its own schedule. Morning and afternoon visiting runs Monday through Saturday, while evening visiting is Tuesday through Thursday. Visits are first come, first served, and visitors should call (530) 573-3030 before traveling for an evening visit to make sure visiting has not been cancelled. The Tahoe basin location makes this especially important during winter conditions, major holiday periods, and heavy U.S. Highway 50 travel days.

Final check-in details are specific and should be planned around. Morning visits require check-in by 10:30 AM, afternoon visits by 3:30 PM, and evening visits by 9:30 PM. Proper identification is required before visiting. The Sheriff's rules limit each visitor to three 30-minute visits per week and one visit per day unless jail administration preapproves an exception. Each inmate is also allowed up to three 30-minute visits per week. One visitor may visit at a time, with the minor and legal guardian exception described in the visiting rules.

Visitors may not bring cell phones, cameras, electronics, handbags, writing supplies, books, food, or beverages into the visiting area. Dress rules prohibit bare backs, exposed chests or abdomens, tank tops, half tops, spaghetti straps, bathing suits, short shorts, short skirts or dresses, sheer fabric, exposed undergarments, gang attire, and most headwear. Shoes are required. Inmates will not be pulled from workstations or court-ordered classes, and legal holidays are closed.

The official El Dorado County jail visiting page lists different schedules for the two county jail facilities.

Use the South Lake Tahoe lines in that table, since the Tahoe jail does not have the same evening days as Placerville.

Mail, Phone, and Money at El Dorado County South Lake Tahoe Jail

The Sheriff's inmate correspondence rules apply to South Lake Tahoe Jail. Routine personal letters are not mailed to Al Tahoe Boulevard. They go to a scan-mail processing address in Longview, Texas, where accepted mail is scanned, delivered electronically, and destroyed after processing. Legal and medical mail must be sent to the actual jail facility where the inmate is housed, so call the jail if placement is uncertain.

Routine mail must include the inmate name, Sheriff's booking number, and return address. Accepted mail is limited to 8.5 inches by 11 inches, front side only, with a maximum of five pages and one photo per mailing. Mail over five pages is returned. If more than one photo is included, the entire mailing is returned. Do not send books, magazines, newspapers, bulk mail, money, legal mail, or medical mail to the Longview processing address.

The Sheriff's inmate correspondence page documents the mail, NCIC phone, NCIC video, and CorrectPay messaging details.

For South Lake Tahoe families, the key local point is that routine personal mail uses the Texas processing address, while legal and medical correspondence uses the actual Tahoe jail address after facility placement is confirmed.

Booking and Intake at El Dorado County South Lake Tahoe Jail

A Tahoe-side arrest may originate with South Lake Tahoe Police, the El Dorado County Sheriff's Office, CHP, or another agency. Once the person is booked into county custody, the jail booking record can show the original arresting agency, arrest location, booking date, booking number, status, bail, and charge details. The booking agency and arresting agency can be different, so do not assume a jail record is the same document as a city police report or a CHP report.

Booking generally includes identity confirmation, entry of arrest and charge information, medical and mental-health screening, housing classification, and access to phone or messaging systems. The official public pages do not publish a separate public booking-desk schedule for the South Lake Tahoe facility, so the safer public instruction is to call the jail for facility-specific intake questions. Citizen RIMS may also lag behind a recent arrest because the inspected configuration requires a completed booking before the person appears publicly.

After the first jail booking, several record paths can split. Current custody stays with the Citizen RIMS roster and the jail phone line. Report copies and booking-record requests route through the Sheriff's Records Unit, subject to public-records limits, identity rules, and a $0.25 per-page copy fee. Court charges after a South Lake Tahoe arrest route through El Dorado Superior Court, including the South Lake Tahoe courthouse departments when the case is handled there. A later state-prison sentence moves lookup to CDCR CIRIS, not the county jail roster.

Programs and Tahoe Basin Jail Context

The Sheriff's Inmate Services page describes countywide jail programs and says program availability may be changed by jail management. It does not publish a separate Tahoe-only program list. Available countywide offerings include adult education through the El Dorado County Office of Education and El Dorado Adult School, with GED, English as a Second Language, adult basic education, high school diploma, adult enrichment, and career awareness options. The education program described in the research requires inmate interest and at least six weeks in custody.

The same program page lists HEARTS substance-abuse education, chaplain and religious services, Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous, parenting classes, MRT, and anger management. HEARTS is described as Health Education, Addiction Recovery Toward Self-Responsibility, a three-month program with two sessions per week covering substance use, health consequences, family issues, career, and recovery steps. For a South Lake Tahoe inmate, actual access can depend on custody length, classification, scheduling, and jail management discretion.

The Sheriff's inmate services page is the source for countywide jail education, recovery, religious, and reentry programming.

Because the page is countywide, it supports program context for South Lake Tahoe Jail without implying a guaranteed class schedule for every inmate.