Receipts, not rhetoric

MoBetta USA

Every county in America is built the same way: a jail, a sheriff, and a judge. You pay for all three. This map is the front door — pick your state, then your county, and see the record.

Find your state

Full site live County map · records in progress

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Alaska · Hawaiʻi · the territories — shown as insets, not to scale

All 56 jurisdictions

Why the county jail is the place to look

A county jail holds people who have mostly not been convicted of anything. It is paid for out of county taxes, run by an elected sheriff, and filled or emptied by the judges who set bond. When it is run badly, the people of that county pay twice — once in money, once in lives.

77%of the people who died in local jails in 2019 had not been convicted of a crime.Bureau of Justice Statistics
30%of all local jail deaths in 2019 were suicides — the leading single cause.Bureau of Justice Statistics
990+deaths in custody the Justice Department failed to identify in a single year (FY2021).U.S. Senate investigation, 2022

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

Sources: Mortality in Local Jails, 2000–2019 and Suicide in Local Jails and State and Federal Prisons, 2000–2019, Bureau of Justice Statistics · Death in Custody Reporting Act: Background and Legislative Considerations, Congressional Research Service · Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, September 2022. Every figure on this page is drawn from a named public record. Nothing here is estimated.