Officials from eight counties selected according to jail size were interviewed. Parameters from site visits were used to estimate jail costs. The jails selected ranged in capacity from 5 to 41 prisoners. In addition, costs from the sample of local jails were compared to costs from studies of...

Periodically, rural leaders and citizens face once-in-a-lifetime community decisions regarding whether to build a new jail or to pass a jail bond. The study described here identified frameworks, methods, and relative costs for a sample of 8 rural county jails with a capacity of less than 50 to...