MoBetta Rhode Island — Every County. A Jail, a Sheriff, a Judge.

The State Line

The county runs the jail. Rhode Island decides whether the county has to tell you about it.

Before you click a county, here are the rules that county is playing by. Three questions, asked the same way of every state.

Does anybody inspect this jail? No agency named in statute.
no
Can you read the inspection report?Whether the finding is posted where a resident can find it.
no
Does the law require a death in custody to be reported? State law requires a death in custody to be reported.
yes
Is the result published? Nobody has to hand it to you. That is what we are building.
no

Rhode Island's five counties were abolished as units of government, so there are no county jails; the state Department of Corrections holds everyone awaiting trial, mostly at the Intake Service Center on the Adult Correctional Institutions campus in Cranston. The Census Bureau's Rhode Island geographic guide states that counties 'were legally abolished as governmental units but they continue to serve as geographic subdivisions of the state for Census Bureau purposes.' Rhode Island is one of six states the Bureau of Justice Statistics excludes from its Census of Jails for having a combined jail-prison system. No independent inspection or oversight body for RIDOC facilities was identified; the National Resource Center for Correctional Oversight does not list Rhode Island among the states with an external prison oversight body.

Compare all fifty states →

Every one of these counties has a jail, a sheriff, and a judge.

That is the one thing every county in America has in common. The jail belongs to the people of the county and is paid for out of their taxes. The sheriff who runs it is elected. The judge who decides who sits in it is elected or appointed. Three offices, enormous power, and almost nobody watching.

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

The JailWho it holds, what it costs the county, and who dies in it.

The SheriffElected. Runs the jail. Sets its budget request and its culture.

The JudgeSets bond — which decides who waits in that jail and who goes home.

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. The Justice Department is required to count deaths in custody and does not do it properly — a Senate investigation found it failed to identify more than 990 such deaths in a single year. MoBetta is building the county-by-county record instead.

Your VOTE is POWERFUL.

The sheriffs who run these jails are elected. So are the commissioners who pay for them.

Deadlines, ID rules and Rhode Island’s own election office, from vote.gov — the official U.S. government voter site. Where you vote on the day is set by your county election office.

Rhode Island — all 5 counties open. Click any county on the map, or see the transparency scoreboard below.

We Decide. We Lead. We Vote.

The county runs the jail. Rhode Island decides whether the county has to tell you about it.

Every one of these counties has a jail, a sheriff, and a judge.