The Compendium of U.S. jails: creating and conducting research with the first comprehensive contact database of U.S. jails

Table 1 Overview of Data Capture

Data Capture Categories	Definitions of Captured Data
Jails	• Located in U.S. (any state or DC), non-Tribal, non-private • Hold adult residents^a (male, female or both). Can also hold juveniles, but not only juveniles • Hold residents post-adjudication/trial, but can also hold pre-trial, temporary and reentry residents • No single-cell/bed or couple-cell/bed holding units only (i.e., drunk tanks) without any other jail-criteria
Addresses	Actual jail address, not the mailing address (and not the address to send resident mail); Jail/facility address, not the sheriff’s/police chief’s office address, if they are in separate buildings/locales
Phone Numbers	Main jail phone line; Not the number to call to talk to a resident, not the Sherriff’s main line and not any person’s individual line (as people will change positions/phones)
Contact Person(s)	Any contact for Sheriff, jail, or any jail person; When nothing jail-specific is available, include local Sheriff/Police Dept.
Email Addresses	Person in charge of or running the jail; Prefer Captain, Deputy, Warden, Lieutenant; If not, then list Sheriff’s or Chief of Police

^aIn keeping with the growing and important person-first language tradition, we opt to use the term “residents” to refer to individuals confined in U.S. jails. We choose this term because it denotes a particular locale rather than acting as a label or judgement on an individual the way words like “inmates,” “prisoners,” and “convicts” do. We could have used “individuals who are incarcerated”—in true person-first style. However, this language is in passive voice and adds many more words to the manuscript. Thus, we opted for the term residents. Whenever other scholars, residents, or staff use the terms “inmate” or “prisoners,” however, we include that term as it is an in vivo representation of the language used by prior researchers and our prisons, units, and the individuals within them

ISSN: 2194-7899