Vera Institute of Justice

Over the past several decades, the United States has undergone a quiet but colossal jail-building boom. Since 2002, more than 1,200 counties have invested more than $42 billion (2024 dollars) to expand their carceral footprints. This has occurred despite a sustained decrease in jail populations nationwide (about an 11 percent reduction from 2019 to 2024). This decrease is driven mainly by large counties, while jail populations are still on the upswing in some smaller counties. With the scale of jail expansion out of step with this overall drop in the number of people in jail, the public foots the bill for needless incarceration infrastructure.

This website presents two decades of data on jail expansion and construction projects across the United States, showing which counties have proposed or approved funding for expanding jail capacity (such as increasing the number of beds) or building new jail facilities.^[]Since 2025, the federal government has drastically expanded immigration detention capacity, including using space in county jails. This analysis of 2002 to 2022 data does not cover this topic, but please see Vera’s ICE Detention Trends project for more information. It also offers a primer on municipal financing and jail construction. Vera researchers collected and validated information on jail construction projects and proposals from official documents, media sources, public records requests, and phone calls with local jurisdictions, including the total estimated cost (or actual, if available) and size of the project and whether it was an expansion of an existing jail or a new jail construction.^[]The cost information captured in the dataset typically represents the total cost of construction, including financing. However, most sources of information do not detail what is included in the cost estimates, and it is unclear to what extent the project costs include amounts paid to architecture firms, consultants, and other professional services during the planning and implementation phases of the projects, which can be substantial. Vera also tracked, as of 2022, whether the proposals failed, passed, or were still pending. The full dataset is available here.

This website can be used to explore how spending funds on jail construction has transformed the carceral landscape over the last several decades. It demonstrates the tremendous share of public resources directed toward building jail infrastructure at the expense of other types of investments communities desperately need. Use the map to see where this construction has been concentrated and how spending in your jurisdiction compares to similar counties in your state or nationwide. Use the chart further down to see how the cost of jail construction has ballooned in recent years.

Jails are different than prisons: state governments run and pay for most prisons, which hold people serving longer sentences, whereas local county governments run and pay for most of the country’s more than 3,000 jails. County jails typically detain people who are awaiting trial or transfer or are serving short sentences. Seventy-eight percent of the 546,000 people detained in county jails under local authority in 2024 were being held pretrial, meaning they had not been found guilty of the charges they were facing. Many people are stuck in jail because they cannot afford to pay bail, even though money bail is supposed to be set at an amount that a person can pay to secure their release. Pretrial detention also undermines fairness and due process: people who spend time in pretrial detention are more likely to be convicted, even if they did not commit the alleged offense, due to a higher likelihood that they will plead guilty as a result of the pressures of remaining in pretrial detention. People in pretrial detention are also more likely to be given longer, harsher sentences than those who are able to pay bail and secure their release.

Why might a county consider a new or expanded jail?

There are many reasons a county might cite when proposing to expand a jail or build a new jail—some of which are well-founded in research and some less so, depending on the situation. Common reasons counties have stated as rationales for expanding jails or building new jails include the following: 

• Jail overcrowding. Many counties want to expand jails because existing facilities are overcrowded, which can lead to hazardous or even deadly conditions and cause problems for basic operations and access to programming in jails.^[]For example, officials in Sarasota County, Florida, have been planning to reconstruct their jail for several years to deal with crowding. The jail has been over capacity since 2019, leading to three people regularly being held in two-person cells. Andy Cole, “County Commissioner Says Sarasota Jail Is at ‘Emergency’ Level,” Spectrum News, December 3, 2025, https://perma.cc/G36Z-3XCC. Although the total number of people in jail detention has decreased since its peak in the mid-2000s, the steepest declines have occurred mostly in larger counties. Meanwhile, sharp increases have occurred in some smaller and rural counties. Even after a drastic cut in jail detention during the COVID-19 pandemic for public health reasons, many counties have now returned to or are approaching pre-pandemic population levels and are facing problems related to overcrowding. The most sustainable and effective way to reduce overcrowding is to hold fewer people in jail, not to add more beds. There are many well-established reforms that ensure that courts reserve jail bed space only for certain categories of defendants or cases.
• Deteriorating building conditions. Many county jails are in old buildings that have serious infrastructure and upkeep problems, which pose severe risks (including risk of death) to the health and safety of both incarcerated people and jail staff and which incur ongoing costs.^[]For example, in September 2025 local officials permanently closed the jail in San Saba County, Texas, after a gas leak sickened employees at the jail. The county had been sending incarcerated people to other facilities since mid-2024, when methane was discovered in jail cells. Kevin Duer, “Gas Leak Forces Permanent Closure of San Saba County Jail,” KCEN-TV, September 10, 2025, https://perma.cc/N8W8-HMBH. When a jail faces the possibility of being out of compliance with basic facility standards, it risks lawsuits, loss of accreditation, and other penalties. Some states have adopted new standards for jails in recent years that are crucial for protecting the well-being of people detained in and working in jails, but it can be costly for poorer counties to implement these upgrades without financial assistance. Facing this spending dilemma, some counties opt to pay a daily fee or form longer-term contracts with neighboring facilities to hold people instead of running their own local jail. Sometimes counties consider building a new or expanded jail to improve conditions and reduce liability, arguing that this could be a better long-term investment of a similar amount of money. However, a new or improved jail building alone, without similar investment in changing the problematic practices that lead to excessive pretrial detention and overcrowding, will simply reproduce the same conditions over time. Therefore, counties should create comprehensive policy plans that ensure compliance with jail facility standards and also require concrete, evidence-based reforms to reduce the use of jail incarceration.

• Simplistic projections of jail population growth. Some elected officials rely on needs assessments and projected jail capacity needs written by private architecture firms that have a clear financial conflict of interest, because they would benefit from construction contracts.^[] For an example of a needs assessment, see the one conducted by CGL Companies and JFA Institute in February 2023 for Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, available for download here: Lancaster County Correctional Facility, “Needs Assessment Final Report,” December 2022, revised February 2023, https://perma.cc/6M5A-5U6J. The needs assessment included projections for a dramatically increasing jail population in the future, despite declines in the overall and violent crime rates in the county amid an increasing overall resident population. The needs assessment methods and conclusions were criticized by the Prison Policy Initiative in a 2024 memo to the Lancaster Bail Fund, available here: Memo from Sarah Staudt, Prison Policy Initiative, to Lancaster Bail Fund re: “Lancaster County Jail Needs Assessment and Possible Alternatives to Incarceration,” March 8, 2024, https://perma.cc/7QGA-GDAR. These assessments sometimes use opaque formulas, simplistic linear projections of future jail populations, and crude assumptions about crime trends and “at-risk” groups to recommend building larger facilities that can accommodate future growth. These methods fall apart upon scrutiny. However, counties often take these projections at face value, without first attempting any changes in policy that would reduce the current rate of jail detention.

• Revenue generation. By building jails with more beds than needed, counties sometimes hope to create a revenue stream via the per diem payments they receive for renting beds to detain incarcerated people for other agencies, like state departments of corrections (DOCs) or federal agencies like U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). But these payments are not stable, and sometimes they do not cover the costs that counties incur to hold people for other agencies. For example, in recent years discrepancies between the cost of holding people by counties for state DOCs have led to legal fights between counties and state agencies in Mississippi and Kentucky. Counties that build bigger with the explicit purpose of renting beds are often left on the hook to pay for empty beds in jails that are much too large for their communities. In several cases, these jails have closed before the county even finished paying off the debt it took on to build them.  

• Secondary arguments. Although the other reasons listed are the ones most commonly stated by county officials to support plans to expand or build new jails, county leaders sometimes make other arguments as further justification. For example, sometimes county officials claim that expanding a jail or building a new one will preserve existing jobs or bring new jobs to the county (including jobs at the jail, construction work, and work for local businesses that provide services to the jail). However, jails across the country are grappling with persistent and severe staffing shortfalls despite offering pay increases and lowering employment requirements. Some jails have even had to temporarily or permanently close down due to an inability to hire or retain sufficient staff. The reality is that building a new and expanded jail does not guarantee a county will be able to recruit sufficient staff to run it. Responsibly reducing the number of people behind bars should be the first line of action for counties seeking to ensure the economic vitality of their communities. Some officials have also called for extra jail bed space as a way to have quarantine options for incarcerated people during any future pandemics or medical emergencies, given that many jails struggled with this during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. However, using jail space for quarantine reasons is unnecessary. Many governments imposed measures in the early weeks of the pandemic that rapidly decreased jail and prison populations by 25 percent nationwide without corresponding increases in crime, proving that reducing jail populations can be done safely. These jail population reductions have been sustained in many places across the country.  

How much do counties spend on jail construction and expansion?

Project costs for both new jails and expansion projects have fluctuated widely year over year based on project size and location, with the highest spending occurring from 2019 to 2022. Analysis of data collected by Vera for this project shows the average new jail during this four-year time period cost $77 million, and the average jail expansion project cost $31 million. By contrast, the average new jail cost $34 million and the average jail expansion cost $21 million in the previous four-year period (2015 to 2018). This chart reflects the increase in overall spending on jail expansion and construction projects over a 20-year period.

Given the tremendous costs associated with building and operating jails—and that these costs are rarely offset by state or federal dollars—county decision makers should think carefully about whether it is worthwhile to build at the scale they are undertaking—or at all—versus investing in safe ways to keep more people out of jails.

The hidden operational costs of jails

How do counties raise money to pay for jail expansion or construction?

Counties typically raise funds for jail expansion or construction in various ways.

• Direct appropriation. The local governing body may use discretionary funds that do not have another special purpose. Usually, the general fund is a government’s largest funding stream and primarily consists of revenue made from taxes, fees, and miscellaneous other sources. These funds can be allocated to any program or area the governing body chooses.    

• Financing.
  • General obligation bonds. An agency (such as a county government) may use a general obligation bond, often referred to as a GO bond, to take on a debt that is typically secured via tax dollars. This means residents’ public dollars are backing the county’s ability to borrow—and as such, they almost always require a public bond approval process. State regulations govern when and how agencies can issue GO bonds for the purposes of supporting jail projects. Like all municipal bonds, payments directly enrich bondholders who reap the benefits of investing money in projects afforded tax-exempt status. 
  • Lease-purchase agreements. A lease-purchase agreement (sometimes referred to as a lease-revenue bond) is a contract between a jurisdiction and a nonprofit third party (such as a county development authority created for the explicit purpose of issuing the bond) or a private developer who finances and owns the new facility. The jurisdiction typically retains control over the facility’s design, construction, operation, and maintenance. The jurisdiction pays the third party in installments (or “lease” payments) until the cost of the property and interest have been paid, at which time the ownership is transferred to the jurisdiction. These types of agreements allow public officials to bypass the democratic process; since they are not general obligation bonds backed by tax revenue, lease-purchase agreements do not require a public vote, and are sometimes used in counties where constituents have already voted down a general obligation bond to build a new jail. Although they are often sold to governments as low-cost because they qualify for tax-exempt interest, lease-purchase agreements are riskier than general obligation bonds and thus can end up being more expensive due to higher interest rates and higher legal and underwriting costs. The funds used to pay back the debt can come from a variety of sources—including, in some cases, projected revenue from renting jail beds to other agencies such as ICE. This form of financing is risky in multiple ways. Building jails backed by lease-revenue bonds can create perverse incentives, tying a community’s economic future to the continuation or growth of harmful detention practices. In several cases, the Internal Revenue Service has challenged the tax-exempt status of such bonds, leading jurisdictions to default on the debt. 
• Federal and state funding. Federal and state governments provide grants to counties, cities, and special districts, usually restricted to support a specific use. For example, Ohio governor Mike DeWine and the Ohio General Assembly launched the Ohio Jail Safety and Security Program in 2021 to fund jail remodeling and construction projects. The program had distributed more than more than $230 million to 70 jail projects as of November 2025. In some cases, the federal and state governments have provided grants to support jail expansion projects. In 2022, the federal government gave trillions in American Rescue Plan Act funding to states, counties, cities, and tribal governments to support a strong recovery from the pandemic. Several jurisdictions used this funding for jail projects, despite U.S. Department of Treasury rules that discouraged and partially prohibited the use of funds for carceral infrastructure. Rural counties have also used U.S. Department of Agriculture funding meant for community development to expand the footprint of local jails. 

These strategies to generate the money to pay for jail expansion or construction carry significant fiscal risks for county governments and their residents. Using bonds as a financing strategy—that is, using money that the county does not have in hand—carries significant risks. Jail bonds have the second-highest default rate in the municipal sector. Defaulting on bond payments can have serious long-term consequences for a county’s economic health and ability to borrow money in the future. Falling behind on payments can also cause immediate financial distress. For example, bondholders may sue the county for failing to make payments on the bonds, leading to costly legal fees and damage to the county’s fiscal reputation, as well as cuts in other services in order to cover missed bond payments; bankruptcy is also a potential result. 

Further Reading and Resources

For more information on actions that local organizations, government agencies, and elected officials can take to reduce jail incarceration—and to counter proposals to spend precious resources on new jail facilities or more jail beds—explore these tools:  

• Vera Institute of Justice, “A Toolkit for Jail Decarceration in Your Community,” October 2021, https://www.vera.org/a-toolkit-for-jail-decarceration-in-your-community.
• Community Justice Exchange, “If They Build It: Organizing Lessons and Strategies Against Carceral Infrastructure,” 2025, https://www.communityjusticeexchange.org/en/resources-all/if-they-build-it-organizing-lessons-amp-strategies-against-carceral-infrastructure.
• Prison Policy Initiative, “Caging Compassion: Recognizing and Resisting Carceral Humanist Narratives in Criminal Justice Reform,” 2026, https://www.prisonpolicy.org/trainings/carceralhumanism.html.
• Prison Policy Initiative, “Advocacy Toolkit,” https://www.prisonpolicy.org/trainings.
• Californians United for a Responsible Budget (CURB), “How to Stop a Jail in Your Town: A Compilation of Resources from Fights Against Jail Expansion,” 2019,  https://perma.cc/3YFV-PU8L

Endnotes

¹ Since 2025, the federal government has drastically expanded immigration detention capacity, including using space in county jails. This analysis of 2002 to 2022 data does not cover this topic, but please see Vera’s ICE Detention Trends project for more information.

² The cost information captured in the dataset typically represents the total cost of construction, including financing. However, most sources of information do not detail what is included in the cost estimates, and it is unclear to what extent the project costs include amounts paid to architecture firms, consultants, and other professional services during the planning and implementation phases of the projects, which can be substantial.

³ For example, officials in Sarasota County, Florida, have been planning to reconstruct their jail for several years to deal with crowding. The jail has been over capacity since 2019, leading to three people regularly being held in two-person cells. Andy Cole, “County Commissioner Says Sarasota Jail Is at ‘Emergency’ Level,” Spectrum News, December 3, 2025, https://perma.cc/G36Z-3XCC.

⁴ For example, in September 2025 local officials permanently closed the jail in San Saba County, Texas, after a gas leak sickened employees at the jail. The county had been sending incarcerated people to other facilities since mid-2024, when methane was discovered in jail cells. Kevin Duer, “Gas Leak Forces Permanent Closure of San Saba County Jail,” KCEN-TV, September 10, 2025, https://perma.cc/N8W8-HMBH.

⁵ For an example of a needs assessment, see the one conducted by CGL Companies and JFA Institute in February 2023 for Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, available for download here: Lancaster County Correctional Facility, “Needs Assessment Final Report,” December 2022, revised February 2023, https://perma.cc/6M5A-5U6J. The needs assessment included projections for a dramatically increasing jail population in the future, despite declines in the overall and violent crime rates in the county amid an increasing overall resident population. The needs assessment methods and conclusions were criticized by the Prison Policy Initiative in a 2024 memo to the Lancaster Bail Fund, available here: Memo from Sarah Staudt, Prison Policy Initiative, to Lancaster Bail Fund re: “Lancaster County Jail Needs Assessment and Possible Alternatives to Incarceration,” March 8, 2024, https://perma.cc/7QGA-GDAR.