Clicking on any of the New York 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.
New York has 62 counties. Outside the city, the sheriff runs the jail. New York City is different. The Department of Correction runs one system for all five boroughs. On June 1, 2026, that system held 6,714 people, most of them still on Rikers Island. The city is building four borough jails meant to hold no more than 4,160, and Rikers is still open. Erie, Monroe, Onondaga, Nassau, and Suffolk are the large jails upstate and on Long Island. A North Country county may have a small jail or board people with a neighbor.
The State Commission of Correction sets jail standards and takes the daily counts. A sentence of a year or less stays in the local jail. Someone waiting on a transfer to state prison sits there too. A longer felony sentence goes to the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. A federal sentence goes to the Bureau of Prisons. MDC Brooklyn and FCI Otisville are the federal prisons in the state.
Jails in New York are not the state prisons. The department has closed a long list of prisons since 2011, and the count is well under the old figure of 40,000. The men’s prisons that families still ask about include Attica, Clinton in Dannemora, Coxsackie, Greene, and Five Points. Bedford Hills and Albion are the women’s prisons. A person sentenced in the Bronx can end up six hours north.
Fifty-seven county jails, plus the city system. Not 62 separate jail systems. When a jail holds someone for another county, for the state, or for the U.S. Marshals, it bills a daily rate. The city system is the one most families are searching for, and the bus to Rikers is its own wait.
Most counties do not run a juvenile detention center. The Office of Children and Family Services regulates the ones that exist. Secure detention is a short list of county and New York City facilities for a youth waiting on a hearing. Non-secure detention is a separate set of smaller homes. On October 7, 2026, the city’s non-secure homes were nearly full, 58 youth in 62 beds. The rest of the state had 24 youth in 67 non-secure beds. A committed youth goes to an OCFS facility or, for an older adolescent sentenced as an adult, into the state prison system. Rikers is not a juvenile prison.
Search the county of the arrest. The adult listing is that sheriff’s jail, or the city Department of Correction. The youth listing is the detention center that county uses.
In the city, the first day is a precinct, then a bus. Intake is identity, prints, a medical screen, a search, clothes bagged, one call if the phones are up. The person has not been convicted. There is no phone in the cell, and no way to know if a shift, a MetroCard, an apartment, or the kids are covered. Glasses stay in property. Upstate, the same booking happens in a quieter building, and in January the holding cell is cold.
The hard part is the ordinary part. The uniform does not fit. The bunk is thin, and the next bed is awake. Meals are plain and on a clock. Mail is slow. A visit to Rikers means a bus and a wait, and it may be canceled. Withdrawal from alcohol, opioids, or methamphetamine can start before arraignment, and the night is when that gets loud. Officers who apply the rules the same way to everyone run a quieter unit. Uneven rules are how contraband moves. The city and the large county jails can separate by risk. A small North Country jail often cannot.
Tablets, video visits, and deposits take some of the isolation out of the larger jails. A message home does not fix the bed or the case, and the account can be shut off. Each county page on this site lists the jail phone, the vendor, and the way to send money. For the city, that page is the Department of Correction, not a sheriff.