Mississippi Jail Records

The purpose of this project is to provide transparency regarding the identity of those incarcerated in Mississippi’s county jails, the length of their incarceration, and the reasons for their detention. While it is clear that long-term incarceration prior to indictment and trial is a problem throughout Mississippi, no effort has been made as part of this project to identify the cause of the delay in any particular case. The reasons for backlog in Mississippi’s criminal justice system are many and varied, and they are not the same in each Mississippi county.

Users of this database must take into consideration the following:

• The information contained in the database was provided by Mississippi sheriffs, and no effort has been made to confirm the accuracy of the information provided.
• As revealed in the attached copies, there is no uniform method of reporting jail census information, and there is significant variance in how sheriffs describe criminal charges and/or other reasons for incarceration.
• While the vast majority of people identified in this database are awaiting indictment and/or trial, some are incarcerated for other reasons such as delay in mental health evaluation or treatment, the existence of a “hold” by another jurisdiction, participation in the “trusty program”, or the fact that they have been convicted and are being held in the local jail rather than a state prison.
• It is possible that individuals in this database have been released since the date of the most recent jail list.

Notes regarding the data

November 2023 Database

• Issaquena, Sharkey, and Washington Counties are either non-compliant with the Mississippi Rules of Criminal Procedure or refused to produce jail lists in their possession. These counties do not have online jail information available to the public.
• Forrest, Tunica, Adams, and Yazoo Counties did not produce jail lists in response to public records requests. Information regarding detainees in those counties was obtained from the online jail information on their websites.

December 2021 Database

• The December 2021 database does not include jail lists from Humphreys, Newton, Sharkey, or Tippah counties. These counties either are non-compliant with the Mississippi Rules of Criminal Procedure and are not creating and maintaining jail lists, or they refused to produce jail lists in their possession.
• Information for DeSoto County and Yazoo County in the December 2021 database was obtained from the online jail information available on December 13, 2021 (while the vast majority of Mississippi counties provide no jail information online, approximately 20 counties list current detainees on county websites).

May 2019 Database

• Carroll County and Winston County did not have criminal terms of court during the time between release of the November 2018 database and completion of the May 2019 database.
• For the May 2019 database, Lee County, Hinds County, and Jackson County produced information regarding only those detainees held more than 90 days (copies attached under Documents tab).
• The May 2019 database includes information obtained from the Lee County Sheriff’s Department website for all detainees (including those held less than 90 days).
• Hinds County and Jackson County information does not include detainees held less than 90 days.
• Information regarding Pearl River County detainees was obtained from the Pearl River County Detention Facility website for the May 2019 database.

November 2018 Database

• No new data is available for Copiah and Neshoba Counties in the November 2018 report due to the fact that neither county held a criminal term of court during the data collection period.
• Despite the requirements of the Mississippi Rules of Criminal Procedure, Montgomery, Greene, and Clarke Counties failed to provided arrest dates in the jail lists used for the November 2018 report. Montgomery County also failed to provide arrest dates in the jail lists used to create the April 2018 report.