City & County Jails in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania - Inmate Search - All County Jail Rosters
Clicking on any of the Pennsylvania 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.
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Pennsylvania county jails and state prisons
Pennsylvania has 67 counties. The jail is a county operation, run by a warden or a board, not always by the sheriff. Philadelphia’s Department of Prisons is the largest, with the campuses on State Road. Allegheny County Jail in Pittsburgh is the other building most families are looking for. Montgomery, Bucks, Delaware, Dauphin, and Erie are the next tier. A rural county in the northern tier may have one small jail and send overflow to a neighbor. City police departments have holding rooms. They are not county jails.
A sentence of a year or less, and some sentences under two years, stay in the county jail. A longer felony sentence goes to the Department of Corrections. A federal sentence goes to the Bureau of Prisons. FCI Allenwood, FCI Schuylkill, and USP Canaan are the federal prisons in the state. When a county jail holds someone for another county, for the state, or for the U.S. Marshals, it bills a daily rate. That rate is local.
Jails in Pennsylvania are the pretrial and short-sentence buildings. State prison is a different map. On June 30, 2026, the department held 37,921 people in its institutions, against a listed capacity of 45,280. SCI Phoenix in Montgomery County held 3,175. SCI Benner, Albion, and Somerset were each near 1,900. SCI Muncy and SCI Cambridge Springs are the women’s prisons. Quehanna Boot Camp and SCI Rockview showed zero on that report. A person sentenced in Philadelphia can end up in Erie or Wayne County.
How many county jails are there in Pennsylvania?
Sixty-seven counties, and most of them still operate a jail. Philadelphia runs more than one building. Allegheny runs one large jail on the river. A full jail in a northern county means a transfer, not a second jail in the same town.
How many juvenile detention centers are there in Pennsylvania?
County detention is scarce. Counties that still have a juvenile detention center use it for a youth waiting on a hearing. Allegheny reopened Highland Detention Center as a small male unit and has been adding beds. Most counties contract, and a bed is not always available. A youth can end up in a detention center several counties away, or, in a few cases, in a county jail under a court order.
A commitment is a different placement. The state youth development centers and private residential programs take youth the court has placed out of home. Those are not the county jails. Search the county of the arrest. The listing shows the detention center that county uses, and a state youth center only if the youth has been committed.
What the first days in a Pennsylvania county jail are like
In Philadelphia the first day is a police district, then a ride to State Road. 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 SEPTA pass, an apartment, or the kids are covered. Glasses stay in property. In Allegheny the same booking happens in one building on the river. In a northern county it happens in a smaller room, and in January that room 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 State Road means a bus and a wait, and it may be canceled. Withdrawal from alcohol, opioids, or methamphetamine can start before the preliminary hearing, 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. Philadelphia and Allegheny can separate by risk. A small northern 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 Philadelphia, that page is the Department of Prisons, not a sheriff.