New York County, New York — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

New York City Department of Correction jail system

Operated byNew York City Department of Correction
Department addressNew York City Department of Correction, 75-20 Astoria Boulevard South, Queens, NY 11370
Facilities in ManhattanBellevue Hospital Prison Ward and the Bellevue Hospital Outposted Therapeutic Housing Units, 462 1st Avenue, opened 2026
Main facilitiesSeven jails on Rikers Island in Queens — EMTC, GRVC, OBCC, RNDC, RMSC, RESH and the West Facility — plus the Elmhurst and Bellevue hospital prison wards
Who is heldPeople held by the courts awaiting trial and people serving sentences of one year or less

Source: New York City Department of Correction — Facilities · checked 2026-09-20

Transparency rating

4/10Partial

✓The jail is named
✓Who is in custody
✗Beds and daily population — not published
✗What it costs taxpayers — not published
✗Deaths in custody — not published
✓PREA audits
✗Independent inspection — not published
✗Who else it holds, and for how much — not published
✓How to post bond
✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what New York County publishes about a jail its taxpayers own, checked 2026-09-20. Nothing here says the jail is run well or badly. Every mark moves the moment the county posts the document.

The Building

You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.

Year builtNot found
Original costNot found
Paid for byNot found
BedsNot found

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Not found

Runs the jailNo — New York County has no sheriff-run county jail. The New York City Department of Correction runs the jails serving all five boroughs.
New York City SheriffNew York City has an elected Sheriff who is a city officer under the Department of Finance and does not run the jails.
Who leads the jail systemStanley Richards, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Correction, appointed February 2026

Still needed

Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail

Source: New York City Department of Correction — Commissioner · checked 2026-09-20

The Judges

New York's county and supreme court justices are state judicial officers, not county officials; city, town and village justices also set bail for people arrested in their areas.

New York County Circuit Court

Not found

Still needed

The county's bond schedule
Share of the jail population held pretrial
Median time from booking to first appearance

Source: the state judiciary · checked 2026-09-20

The County Legislature or Board of Supervisors

They pay for the jail. In most counties the sheriff runs it.

What they controlThe jail budget, the building itself, and the agreements that rent its beds to other agencies. Several counties also have an elected County Executive. In Westchester a county Department of Correction runs the jail rather than the sheriff.
What they don'tDay-to-day operations, and state oversight. The sheriff is separately elected and keeps the jail in most counties (NY Correction Law art. 20), while the State Commission of Correction sets the standards, inspects the facility and investigates every death in custody. The five New York City counties have no county sheriff jail at all — the city Department of Correction runs them.
NoteNew York County has no county governing board. The five boroughs are governed by the City of New York, and no county legislature exists for Manhattan.
The boardNot found
Where the jail money is decidedNot found

Notes on the record

New York County is the borough of Manhattan. It has no county sheriff jail; the New York City Department of Correction runs the jails serving all five boroughs.
The ten checks were judged on nyc.gov/site/doc, the Department of Correction's own site, which is the first-party publisher for the five New York City counties.
The department names its facilities, gives their addresses and boroughs, and runs a public person-in-custody lookup on a nyc.gov host.
PREA: the data page posts annual sexual-abuse allegations and incidents reports and 2025 PREA audit reports for the West Facility and RMSC.
The department's post-bail page gives clear in-person bail guidance — locations, hours, documents needed and accepted payment methods — and states that online bail payment is unavailable.
Commissary reports for 2023 to 2026 are posted, but the rates themselves were not visible on a page that was opened, so fees is recorded as no.
No average-daily-population figure, budget document, death-in-custody record or inspection report was found on a Department of Correction page that opened; its average-daily-population page carried no figures.
No county seat page was opened, so seat_source is left empty rather than citing a page that does not say it.
State inspection/oversight: New York's State Commission of Correction oversees every local correctional facility in the state, sets the minimum standards they must meet, inspects them, and investigates every death in custody.

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in New York County and what it costs the people who live here. Nationally, almost 77% of the people who died in local jails in 2019 had not been convicted of anything, and suicide was the leading single cause of those deaths (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Mortality in Local Jails, 2000–2019).

How much is your sheriff — and your judge — costing you?

Your VOTE is POWERFUL.

The sheriff who runs this jail is elected. So are the legislators who pay for it.

Names verified 2026-09-20 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered