How this site sources what it publishes.
Every facility guide and record page on AllRecentArrests.us is built from documents that corrections agencies publish themselves. This page sets out where those facts come from, the rule that keeps unsourced claims off the site, how figures are dated, what we deliberately do not do, and how to get something corrected or removed.
Facts come from the agency that holds the record
The operating agency is the primary source for everything we say about a facility. In practice that means a state department of corrections facility page, a Federal Bureau of Prisons institution page, a sheriff's office jail division, a published inspection report, or a federal statistical release such as the Bureau of Justice Statistics jail census.
Each fact is recorded against the source it came from — the source URL and the date it was retrieved — before it is written into a page. That record is what allows a figure on this site to be traced back to the document it came from, and what lets us re-check it when an agency updates its own page.
A fuller breakdown of the categories of data we hold and where each originates is on our data sources page.
If it cannot be sourced, it does not get published
This is the standard the rest of the process is built around, and it is enforced rather than aspirational. A statement with no resolvable source is dropped from the page instead of being softened, hedged, or estimated.
No source, no sentence
A fact that cannot be tied to a specific published document with a retrieval date is not written at all. It is omitted, not approximated.
No undated population figures
Counts and capacity numbers move constantly. A population figure with no stated "as of" date is dropped rather than published without one.
Short beats padded
Where the sourced material for a facility is thin, the page stays short. Length is never made up to fill space.
No inferred identities
Facility names are ambiguous across states and counties. Records are matched deliberately, never by loose name similarity.
Everything carries a date, because everything moves
Corrections data is not static. Populations shift week to week, wardens change, visiting schedules are revised or suspended, and facilities are renamed, repurposed and closed. A page that reads as permanent is a page that will mislead somebody.
- Retrieval dates
- Facts are held against the date the source was read, so the age of any statement is known rather than assumed.
- Stated "as of"
- Population and capacity figures are published with the date the agency reported them, not as a live count.
- Scale, not precision
- Where a number describes the size of an institution rather than today's headcount, the page says so plainly.
- Confirm before you travel
- Anything that affects a visit — hours, eligibility, whether visiting is running at all — is published with an instruction to confirm it with the facility on the day.
What this site is not
Being clear about the boundaries is part of the standard. Readers arrive here under stress and often at speed, and an overstated claim about what we can do costs them time they do not have.
- We are not a government agency. We do not create the underlying records and cannot alter an agency's file.
- We are not a consumer reporting agency. Nothing here may be used to make decisions about employment, housing, credit, insurance, or tenant screening.
- This is not legal advice. Our guides explain how systems generally work. Rules differ between the federal Bureau of Prisons, state departments, and county sheriffs, and deadlines are unforgiving — for advice on a specific case, speak to a licensed attorney.
- We are not the authority on any facility. Where our page and the institution disagree, the institution is right and we want to hear about it.
- We do not publish what we cannot source. Gaps in our coverage are gaps in the public record, not omissions we have filled in.
How to get something fixed or taken down
Corrections are part of the method, not an admission that it failed. Public records contain errors, agencies update their own files, and a record that was accurate when published can stop being accurate. We would rather be told.
- Corrections. Tell us what is wrong and, where you can, point to the agency page that shows the correct information. That is the fastest route to a fix.
- Removals. Profile removal can be requested directly through our contact and corrections page. You do not need court paperwork to ask.
- Search engines. Removing a page here does not immediately clear it from Google's cache. Our contact page explains what to expect and how long it usually takes.
- Editorial questions. Queries about sourcing or methodology can be sent to tom.david@allrecentarrests.us.
Who stands behind these pages
Guides and facility pages are published under the AllRecentArrests.us editorial desk, which holds responsibility for sourcing, for the standards set out above, and for acting on corrections. Where a page carries a byline, that byline is the desk.
Editorial responsibility sits with the organisation rather than being spread across unattributed contributors, so there is always a single place to bring a complaint: the desk publishes it, the desk answers for it. The people behind the site are introduced on our about page, and the principles this site was founded on are set out there too.
Found something wrong?
If a figure, an address, a phone number, or a visiting schedule on this site does not match what the facility told you, the facility is right — and we want the correction.