City & County Jails in Arizona
Arizona - Inmate Search - All County Jail Rosters
Clicking on any of the Arizona Counties or Cities below will direct you to a list of all the City Jails, County Jails and Juvenile Detention Centers in that specific County.
Search for any jail in Arizona
Arizona county, city, and tribal jails
Arizona has 15 counties and about 7.5 million people. The sheriff in each county runs the jail. Maricopa and Pima operate several buildings. Smaller counties often have one jail and send overflow to a neighbor. City police lockups are mostly booking counters, not places that hold someone for weeks. Sheriff substations are offices, not jails. Tribal nations run their own detention centers, separate from the county system. The old tally of 14 county jails, 27 city jails, and 25 substations is not an official count.
Jails in Arizona hold people before trial and people serving a misdemeanor. A Class 1 misdemeanor can mean up to six months in the county jail. A Class 2 tops out at four months, and a Class 3 at 30 days. A felony sentence goes to the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry. A federal sentence goes to the Bureau of Prisons, which has institutions in Phoenix, Tucson, and Safford. Immigration detention, including contract sites, is a third system and is not a county jail.
Arizona’s incarceration rate is high by national and international standards. It is not the highest in the country. Drug cases and border prosecutions fill a large share of the beds, but they are not the only reason the jails are busy. About three quarters of the people in Arizona jails are waiting for court, not serving a sentence.
What Arizona spends on a jail or prison bed
A figure of $600 a day is not the state’s cost to hold one person. Prison and jail daily rates are far lower, and they vary by facility, medical need, and who is paying. A county that holds someone for another county, for the state, or for a federal agency bills a contract rate. That rate is not one statewide price. Earned-release credits, under Arizona Revised Statutes section 41-1604.07, let some people in state prison shorten the time they serve if they stay in programs and out of trouble. Credits apply to ADCRR sentences. They do not empty the county jails.
ADCRR runs prison complexes at Douglas, Eyman, Lewis, Perryville, Phoenix, Safford, Tucson, Winslow, and Yuma, and it contracts other beds, including facilities in Kingman, Florence, and Eloy. Perryville is the main women’s complex. Look up a jail by the county or city of the arrest. The listing for that place is the sheriff’s jail, or the contract jail, that received the booking.
How many county jails are there in Arizona?
Each of the 15 counties has a sheriff responsible for adult detention. The footprint is not one building per county. Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office runs several jails in the Phoenix area. Pima County does the same around Tucson. Rural jails in Apache, Greenlee, and La Paz are small, and a full jail there means a transfer. When that happens, the sending county pays a daily rate. The same billing applies when ADCRR returns someone for a new charge, or when ICE or the U.S. Marshals rent a bed.
How many juvenile detention centers are there in Arizona?
Eight of the 15 counties run a juvenile detention center. The Administrative Office of the Courts lists Apache, Cochise, Gila, Graham, Greenlee, La Paz, and Santa Cruz as the counties without one. Youth from those counties go to Pinal, Yuma, or Mohave when a judge orders secure custody. In fiscal year 2025, Arizona detained 2,770 juveniles. Maricopa accounted for 1,657 of them, about 60 percent. Detention is a pre-adjudication hold or a short probation sanction. A longer commitment goes to the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections, which is a different agency from the county detention centers.
County detention centers are secure, and they are required to provide school, medical care, and a way for family to visit. Search the county of the arrest to see which detention center, or which contract county, holds youth from that place.
What a first night in an Arizona county jail is like
The building matters less than the booking clock. Intake can run for hours: identity check, mugshot, medical questions, a search, property bagged, one call. In July and August the holding cells are hot. In the high country they are not. A person who has never been in custody is usually worried about the charge, a job, a child, a car left at the stop, and whether anyone knows where they are.
Rules follow the shift. A jail that applies them the same way to everyone is more predictable. Uneven enforcement is where contraband and fights start. The law still presumes the person innocent. The jail does not feel like it. Food is plain, clothes do not fit, and sleep is broken. Withdrawal from alcohol, opioids, or methamphetamine can start before the first court date.
Maricopa and Pima offer tablets, video visits, and deposit accounts that a four-bed rural jail may not. Those services can be suspended. Each Arizona jail page on this site lists the vendor, the visit rules, and the way to send money for that sheriff’s office.