Monroe County Jail Population Data

How to Look Up Monroe County Jail Population Data

The official source is the Sheriff's incarcerated individual information page. It posts a roster and a census, both updated daily, Monday through Friday. The roster is the cleaner count: one line per person in custody, listed alphabetically with a jail number and entry date. The census is larger because a person with several charges appears on several rows. So the roster is the better tool for a head count, and the census is the better tool for detail.

The figures are official, not estimates. They are pulled from the jail's own custody system at the timestamp shown on the report. What the reports do not give you is a packaged statistic like average daily population or a rate per 100,000. Those require either counting the reports yourself over time or turning to state and national sources, which are covered later on the page.

Reading a Live Population Snapshot

Because the roster lists every person in custody once, it works as a live snapshot. Count the lines and you have the current jail population at the report's timestamp. On May 20, 2026, the roster ran 21 pages and the census ran 249 pages. That gap shows how many charges sit behind the head count, since the census expands each person by their charges.

The two reports answer different questions. Use the roster to ask how many people are in jail today. Use the census to ask what they are held on and what their custody status is. The table below compares them.

Why the Count Changes Daily

A jail population is never static. People come in on new arrests and leave on release, bail, or transfer every day. The Sheriff captures both sides of that flow with two more daily reports: a received report for new bookings and a released report for departures. Together they explain why the roster count rises or falls from one weekday to the next.

The received report shows recent bookings with the jail number, name, date of birth, booking time, and charge. The released report shows who left, with the release time, name, date of birth, judge, and charge lines. If you tracked the roster, received, and released reports across a week, you could reconstruct the daily change in population. The reports update Monday through Friday, so weekend movement shows up the following business day.

This daily churn is one reason the county leans on live reports instead of a fixed dashboard number. Any single figure is out of date within hours. The honest measure is the roster at its timestamp, read fresh.

Monroe County Jail Facilities

The county holds people across two sites. The main Monroe County Jail is downtown on South Plymouth Avenue. The Andrew P. Meloni: STAR Academy, the former Monroe Correctional Facility, sits on East Henrietta Road and serves as a transitional, reentry-focused site. Both feed into the same public roster and census. Official rated bed capacity for each site is not posted on the public custody page, so the live reports are the best public measure of how full the jail is.

For a verified capacity figure, the New York State Commission of Correction oversees county jails and publishes facility data, which is the official route to a rated-capacity number.

Pretrial and Sentenced Status

The census carries a classification field, and one common value is UNSENTENCED. That marks a person held while a case is still open, before any sentence. A county jail population is usually a mix of people awaiting trial and people serving short local sentences. The classification field is where that split shows up on the public report.

The Sheriff does not publish a single percentage for the pretrial share. You can approximate it by reading the classification codes across the census, but that is a manual count, not an official statistic. New York's bail reforms have shifted who is held pretrial in recent years, so the share moves over time.

Demographic Data the Census Exposes

The census carries a sex field and a race field on each line, recorded as codes. So the raw material for a demographic breakdown is there, person by person. What the Sheriff does not publish is a tidy percentage table for the population. There is no official line that says what share of the jail is one gender or one race.

To build a demographic picture, you would tally the sex and race codes across the census yourself, which is a manual count rather than an official statistic. Age is harder, since the census line does not carry a full date of birth, though the received and released reports do. For a verified demographic profile, state oversight reports from the New York State Commission of Correction are the more reliable route than a hand count of a daily PDF.

Charge Mix from the Census

The census lists a charge code and a plain description on each line. The codes come from New York's statutes, such as PL for the Penal Law and VTL for the Vehicle and Traffic Law. A line might read PL 215.52 or VTL 1192, with a description beside it. Reading down the charge column gives a rough sense of what the jail is holding people on, from felonies to traffic-related offenses.

This is charge data, not conviction data. A charge on the census reflects the reason for custody, not a final outcome. For the disposition, the court file is the source, which the court records page covers. A single person may also carry both a felony and a lesser charge, so the charge mix is not the same as a count of people.

Mental Health and Medical Population

The public census does not flag medical, mental health, or protective custody status. Those details are kept out of the public report for safety and privacy. So there is no public count of how many people in the Monroe County Jail receive mental health or medical care.

The Sheriff does post HALT Act reporting links on the incarcerated individual page, which relate to segregated confinement rules under New York's HALT Solitary Confinement Act. Those reports are the closest public window into custody conditions, though they are not a medical-population count.

National and State Context

A raw county count means more with context. National and state jail statistics come from outside the county, and they report rates and trends the Sheriff's reports do not. The Bureau of Justice Statistics publishes national and state jail figures, including population per 100,000 residents. The Vera Institute publishes county-level incarceration trends, though it is a research organization rather than a government office. The table below shows where each level of data lives.

When you cite a per-100,000 rate, take it from BJS rather than the local reports, and label it as a state or national figure. The county reports do not compute that rate. A rate per 100,000 residents lets you compare a small county with a large one fairly, which a raw head count cannot do. That is why researchers lean on it, and why the local daily count and the national rate should never be presented as if they measure the same thing.

Population Trends Over Time

The daily reports are a snapshot, not a trend line. To see how the Monroe County jail population has moved across years, you need a source that tracks it over time. The county's own budget and annual reports, the New York State Commission of Correction, and the Vera Institute each publish multi-year figures. The Sheriff's daily PDFs alone will not show a trend unless you save and compare them yourself.

That gap is worth stating plainly. There is no single official Monroe County page that charts jail population by year. Building a trend means combining the live reports with state oversight data and outside research, and marking which numbers come from which source.

Searching for Monroe County Inmate Records by Name

This page covers aggregate population data, not individual lookups. To find one person on the live jail roster, use the Monroe County inmate records page, which explains how to read the roster and census for a single name.

Where the Data Comes From

Every county figure on this page traces to the Monroe County Sheriff's daily roster and census, published on the incarcerated individual information page and updated each weekday. State oversight data comes from the New York State Commission of Correction. National and state rates come from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, and county trend estimates come from the Vera Institute. Where a number is county-specific, it is from the Sheriff's reports; where it is a rate or trend, it is from a state or national source.

Related Resources

For the live roster and how to read it, use Monroe County inmate records. To find people after release, see released inmates. For the charges behind custody, see arrest records and court records.