National Jail Census, 1988

NATIONAL JAIL CENSUS, 1988, is the fifth in a series of
data collection efforts aimed at studying the nation's locally
administered jails. For purposes of this data collection, a jail was
defined as a confinement facility intended for holding adults (and in
some cases juveniles) pending adjudication or having sentences of a
year or less. Jails were further defined as being administered and
staffed by municipal or county employees. Also included in this
collection were six jails privately operated under contract for local
governments. Excluded from the census were federal or
state-administered facilities, including the combined jail-prison
systems in Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Rhode Island, and
Vermont. The mailing list used for the census was derived from data
gathered from the AMERICAN CORRECTIONAL ASSOCIATION DIRECTORY OF
JUSTICE AGENCIES, publications such as AMERICAN JAILS, telephone calls
to large metropolitan jail systems (e.g., New York City), state jail
inspection bureaus, and newspaper articles. Following the initial
mailout to 3,448 facilities, 44 jails were added and 176 deleted
according to the criteria for inclusion, leaving a total of 3,316
facilities in 44 states. Variables include information on jail
population by legal status, age and sex of prisoners, maximum
sentence, admissions and releases, available services, structure and
capacity, expenditure, and employment.