King County Jail - Seattle Division (KCCF) Inmate Search

King County Jail is a high-rise, 385,274-sq.-ft. steel and concrete building located in the heart of downtown Seattle, less than a mile from Puget Sound. Construction for the facility was completed in 1986. The jail consists of four sections: the 17-story north and east towers, a 15-story south tower, and an 8-story west tower. Landscape architect Martha Schwartz created the “Jail House Garden”, a concrete and ceramic tile plaza, in 1987. Schwartz fashioned traditional garden figures, including a topiary, ornamental hedges and a fountain, out of concrete and ceramic tile for the facility's outdoor space.

King County Jail is connected by a secure, enclosed skybridge to the King County Courthouse. The skybridge passes 5th Avenue, the county administration building, and 4th Avenue before joining the historic courthouse building, where the former jail was located. In February 2001, the Nisqually earthquake convinced King County officials to reevaluate the safety and structural soundness of the courthouse with regard to earthquakes. Because closing and replacing the courthouse would have created numerous safety and security issues, particularly involving the transfer of prisoners from the jail to a temporary courthouse, an $83 million seismic retrofitting project was implemented. Prisoners and law enforcement officers continued to travel from the jail to the courthouse and back via the skybridge during renovation.

From the late 1990s to 2011, chronic pipe leak problems that had evaded daily maintenance attempts prompted officials to seek a solution that would last the remainder of the facility’s life, rather than a quick, temporary repair. In the summer of 2011, an extensive $3.6 million renovation of King County Jail domestic water delivery piping system began. Engineering and construction teams worked all night for almost two years re-piping the facility using a new, alternative material to the original copper piping and employing a heat fusion process considered to be leak-proof. The pipe repair project not only solved the leak problems right away, but provided for significant system energy savings as well.

King County Jail updated its inmate visitation setup with the 2014 approval to establish a video visitation system with free and paid options for inmates. Two video visitation system terminals were installed in the jail lobby. The system would allow inmates to have monitored video chat visits with anyone with an internet connection using either a smartphone app or one of the jail lobby terminals.

The west wing of King County Jail ceased housing minimum-security inmates in 2012. A few years later, in response to a state of emergency around homelessness in the county, King County opted to work with community partners to convert the unused west wing space into a shelter for members of Seattle's homeless population. King County partnered with Seattle non-profit Downtown Emergency Service Center (DESC), which runs several local shelters for homeless persons, to make the west wing of the jail fit for its new, separate purpose. DESC brought multiple focus groups, which included formerly homeless persons and local advocates for the homeless, to tour the west wing, provide suggestions, and consult with planners prior to the commencement of the $1.9 million renovation project. The shelter opened in March 2019 with an initial 40 beds.