How to Look Up New York County Jail Population Data
Population data for New York County lives in a few official city sources. There is no single Manhattan jail count, because people arraigned in Manhattan may be held on Rikers Island, in a hospital ward, or in another Department of Correction location. The numbers are reported at the city level and then split by category, such as borough of arraignment, age, race, and gender.
The main feed is the NYC Department of Correction Data Dashboard, launched in August 2022. It shows average daily population, average daily uniform headcount, time in custody, admissions, and discharges. It also tracks safety measures like uses of force, assaults on staff, slashings and stabbings, and fights. Many of these update monthly, and some series reach back about five years. The dashboard itself is visual and embedded, so a reader pulls current totals from the charts rather than from a static table.
Two other official sources round out the picture. The Board of Correction publishes monthly and annual reports on custody safety, in-custody deaths, restrictive housing, and minimum-standards compliance. The City Comptroller keeps an independent official dashboard of staffing, population, assaults, use of force, and death-in-custody trends. For demographic detail, the DOC posts quarterly Population Demographics Report PDFs, which break the count down by borough of arraignment and other categories.
To read these correctly, treat "borough of arraignment" as the New York County marker. It is not the same as where a person lives, where the arrest happened, or which building holds them now. Use it as the best official stand-in for the Manhattan contribution to the citywide jail count.
New York County Jail Capacity Overview
Manhattan does not run its own county jail. The city jail system is centralized, so capacity figures belong to the citywide network rather than to New York County alone. Most people arraigned in Manhattan are housed in Department of Correction facilities clustered on Rikers Island, with some held in secure hospital wards. The list below shows the main DOC facilities and the two hospital prison wards used by the system.
| Facility | Address | Capacity |
|---|---|---|
| AMKC | 18-18 Hazen Street, East Elmhurst, NY 11370 | Not published in official source |
| EMTC | 10-10 Hazen Street, East Elmhurst, NY 11370 | Not published in official source |
| GRVC | 09-09 Hazen Street, East Elmhurst, NY 11370 | Not published in official source |
| NIC | 15-00 Hazen Street, East Elmhurst, NY 11370 | Not published in official source |
| OBCC | 16-00 Hazen Street, East Elmhurst, NY 11370 | Not published in official source |
| RNDC | 11-11 Hazen Street, East Elmhurst, NY 11370 | Not published in official source |
| RMSC | 19-19 Hazen Street, East Elmhurst, NY 11370 | Not published in official source |
| WF | 16-06 Hazen Street, East Elmhurst, NY 11370 | Not published in official source |
| Bellevue Hospital Prison Ward | 462 1st Avenue, New York, NY 10016 | Not published in official source |
| Elmhurst Hospital Prison Ward | 79-01 Broadway, Queens, NY 11370 | Not published in official source |
The official facility address pages do not list a building-by-building bed count. Per-facility capacity is best drawn from Board of Correction and Department of Correction facility reports, not from the address listings. The forward-looking number that is published is the borough-based jail plan: under the Rikers closure plan, the city has begun building four borough jails with capacity for no more than 3,300 people total. That 3,300 figure is a citywide planning cap, not a New York County number.
Note: Manhattan does not operate a stand-alone county jail, so borough-of-arraignment counts should never be matched against the capacity of any single Rikers building.
Average Daily Population for New York County
Average daily population, or ADP, is the mean number of people in custody over a set period. It smooths out the daily swings from new admissions and discharges. The Department of Correction reports ADP for the whole city and breaks it down by category in the quarterly demographics report.
The FY2026 Q2 Population Demographics Report puts the Manhattan share at 2,008 average daily population, which is 28.7% of the citywide ADP. That same report counts 1,354 new admissions tied to Manhattan. These are borough-of-arraignment figures, so they reflect cases arraigned in New York County, not the number of Manhattan residents in custody or the number of people physically housed in a Manhattan building.
For the most current citywide total, the City Comptroller dashboard is the quickest official read. Its page, last updated February 12, 2026, reported the jail population as of January 1 at 6,773. That citywide count sits alongside the Manhattan ADP share to show scale: roughly three in ten people in the snapshot were arraigned in Manhattan.
| Measure | Figure | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| Citywide jail population (Jan 1) | 6,773 | Citywide (Comptroller) |
| Manhattan average daily population | 2,008 | New York County (borough of arraignment) |
| Manhattan share of citywide ADP | 28.7% | New York County (borough of arraignment) |
| Manhattan new admissions | 1,354 | New York County (borough of arraignment) |
Demographic Breakdown of the Jail Population
The quarterly demographics report sorts the count by age, gender, and race. These figures are citywide, not Manhattan-only, so they describe the full system that Manhattan-arraigned people are part of. The age data shows a clear center of gravity. The 30 to 39 band is the largest at 2,335 ADP, 33.4% of the total. Ages 40 to 49 follow at 1,452 ADP, 20.8%. Together, ages 30 to 49 make up over half of the average daily population.
| Category | New admissions | Average daily population | Percent of ADP |
|---|---|---|---|
| Age 18-21 | 419 | 543 | 7.8% |
| Age 22-25 | 529 | 746 | 10.7% |
| Age 26-29 | 686 | 863 | 12.3% |
| Age 30-39 | 1,961 | 2,335 | 33.4% |
| Age 40-49 | 1,193 | 1,452 | 20.8% |
| Age 50-59 | 612 | 703 | 10.1% |
| Age 60-69 | 256 | 320 | 4.6% |
| Age 70+ | 37 | 30 | 0.4% |
| Male | 5,113 | 6,459 | 92.4% |
| Female | 584 | 466 | 6.7% |
| Transgender/Intersex/Non-Binary | 54 | 68 | 1.0% |
| African American | 2,953 | 3,908 | 55.9% |
| Hispanic | 1,789 | 2,246 | 32.1% |
| Asian | 224 | 175 | 2.5% |
| White | 520 | 452 | 6.5% |
| Other race | 265 | 213 | 3.0% |
The race categories are the official report categories and are shown as reported. African American is the largest group at 3,908 ADP, 55.9%, and Hispanic follows at 2,246 ADP, 32.1%. The gender data keeps a separate Transgender/Intersex/Non-Binary line at 68 ADP, 1.0%, which should not be folded into the male or female totals. Race and gender shares here describe the whole city; they should not be read back onto the Manhattan-arraigned subset, since the report does not break demographics down by borough.
Pretrial vs Sentenced New York County Inmates
Most people in the city jail system are held before trial, not after a sentence. The jails serve mainly as pretrial detention, with sentenced terms for shorter city sentences and people held on other holds. The split below frames the two groups in plain terms.
| Status | What it means | Source for exact split |
|---|---|---|
| Pretrial | Held while a case is open, often on bail or remand, with no conviction yet. | DOC Data Dashboard or Board of Correction reports |
| Sentenced | Serving a city sentence after conviction, generally one year or less. | DOC Data Dashboard or Board of Correction reports |
| Other holds | Technical parole holds, warrants, or transfers awaiting another agency. | DOC Data Dashboard or Board of Correction reports |
The FY2026 Q2 demographics excerpt does not give an exact pretrial-to-sentenced ratio. For the current split, the DOC Data Dashboard and the Board of Correction reports carry that breakdown. As a rule, the pretrial group is the large majority in most city jail snapshots, but the precise share moves month to month and should be pulled from the dashboard rather than assumed.
Misdemeanor vs Felony Population in New York County
Charge level is a common question, but it cannot be read from court type alone. A person arraigned in Manhattan Criminal Court could face a misdemeanor or a felony, and the case may move between courts as it develops. The demographics report does not publish a misdemeanor-versus-felony breakdown.
To get a reliable charge mix, the data has to come from Department of Correction or court records that code each case by top charge. Inferring the split from the arraignment court would be guesswork, so the honest answer is that this number needs a sourced charge-level report. For individual case-level charge detail, court records remain the place to look, not the population dashboards.
For arrest-stage charge information in Manhattan, see New York County arrest records, and for pending criminal case status, the court portals carry charge and disposition fields.
Mental Health and Medical Population
A share of the jail population is housed in or near medical settings. The system uses secure hospital prison wards for people who need inpatient care while in custody. Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan and Elmhurst Hospital in Queens both run prison wards tied to the Department of Correction.
The demographics report excerpt does not give a mental health or medical census, and the official source does not publish a bed count for the hospital wards. For care levels, restrictive housing, and in-custody health context, the Board of Correction monitors minimum-standards compliance and reports on custody safety and deaths. The Comptroller dashboard adds an independent view of death-in-custody and use-of-force trends.
One related figure the report does carry is Security Risk Group membership. It lists 650 ADP, 9.3%, with no new admissions on that line. That pattern suggests it is a point-in-custody status measure rather than an intake count. It is a custody-management category, not a medical or mental health one, so it should not be read as a health figure.
National and State Context
City jail numbers are easier to read against state and national benchmarks. The two standard sources for that context are the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, which publishes national jail and incarceration counts, and the Vera Institute of Justice, which tracks jail population and rates across counties and states. Both report incarceration as a rate per 100,000 residents, which lets a small county and a large city be compared on equal footing.
The local data here does not include a New York County or New York City rate per 100,000, and the state and national per-100,000 rates are not in the underlying source either, so none are stated as fact on this page. What can be said plainly is the method: a per-100,000 jail rate is built by dividing the average daily jail population by the resident population, then scaling to 100,000. The comparison below shows how the local, state, and national tiers line up by source and scope, with the rate cells marked for the BJS and Vera reports rather than filled with invented numbers.
| Tier | Best official source | Rate per 100,000 |
|---|---|---|
| County / City (New York County, NYC) | NYC DOC demographics report and Comptroller dashboard | Compute from local ADP and NYC resident population (not stated in source) |
| State (New York) | BJS and Vera Institute statewide jail data | See BJS / Vera state figure (not in local source) |
| National (United States) | BJS national jail report | See BJS national figure (not in local source) |
Read the BJS and Vera figures as external research and analysis, separate from the city operating data. The definitions differ. BJS and Vera count jail use in their own ways, so a reader should not blend their numbers with the city ADP without noting the method gap.
Population Trends Over Time in New York County
Trends are best read from the dashboards rather than a single snapshot. The Department of Correction Data Dashboard, online since August 2022, carries series that reach back about five years for many metrics and refresh monthly. That makes it the core tool for plotting how average daily population and admissions move over time.
To build a multi-year view, several official sources work together. The steps below outline the methodology the city's own data supports.
- Pull monthly average daily population and admissions or discharges from the DOC Data Dashboard.
- Add custody safety, in-custody deaths, and restrictive housing context from Board of Correction monthly and annual reports.
- Cross-check staffing, population, assaults, use of force, and death-in-custody trends on the Comptroller dashboard.
- Compare borough of arraignment and demographic categories across the quarterly DOC demographics PDFs.
- Layer in BJS or Vera only as outside context, and label it as external analysis.
Because the dashboard is visual and embedded, exact five-year charts are read from the dashboard view or its underlying data rather than copied into a static table here. The forward signal in the trend is the Rikers closure plan and the move to four smaller borough jails capped at 3,300 beds.
Note: Dashboard series update monthly and revise over time, so any trend figure should carry the date it was pulled from the DOC or Comptroller view.
Searching for New York County Inmate Records by Name
This page covers population data, not individual people. A name-by-name lookup of who is in custody is a different task and runs through the inmate locator, not the demographic reports. To find a specific person, the booking detail, charge, and release status, use New York County inmate records, which explains the NYC DOC inmate lookup and what each result shows.
Where the Data Comes From
Every figure on this page traces to an official city source. The age, gender, race, and borough-of-arraignment counts come from the FY2026 Q2 Population Demographics Report published by the Department of Correction. The Manhattan share of 2,008 ADP, 28.7%, and the 1,354 new admissions are from that same report, read as borough of arraignment.
The citywide snapshot of 6,773 as of January 1, and the four-jail, 3,300-bed plan, come from the City Comptroller dashboard last updated February 12, 2026. Monthly trend metrics come from the Department of Correction Data Dashboard launched in August 2022. Custody safety, deaths, and restrictive housing context come from the Board of Correction. State and national rate context, where used, would come from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Vera Institute of Justice, and is flagged as outside research wherever it appears.
One caution from the report itself: education background is self-reported at intake, and people are not required to report it. The report lists education as "Not available" for 5,751 new admissions and 6,960 ADP, about 99.5% of ADP, so that field is not used as a reliable population measure. For related custody and release data, see New York County released inmates, and for active holds and outstanding orders, see New York County warrant records.