How the numbers work

Crime.Report counts people booked into jail, using the booking records that county jails publish and that Arre.st collects. It is a companion to Arre.st (who was booked) and Suspects.app (who is wanted).

What a number here means

Each count is jail bookings: a person processed into a jail on a given date. A booking is an arrest, not a conviction, and everyone booked is presumed innocent. These are not crime rates: they depend on policing, on which jails publish records, and on which of those we collect.

Comparisons use the same jails

Jails come and go from our collection. If a big county starts publishing, raw totals would jump without anything changing on the street. So every comparison (“up 8%”, “typical Saturday”) only counts jails that reported bookings in both periods being compared. Each report says how many jails that was.

“Typical” means the average of the same days of the week over the previous four weeks. A Saturday is compared with Saturdays, so weekend patterns don’t look like spikes.

Charge types

Charges are written differently by every jail (“DUI”, “OPERATE UNDER INFLU OF LIQ OR DRUGS”, “DWI”). We sort each charge into one of 19 plain-English groups using wording rules. A booking with several charges counts once in each group it touches, so groups overlap. About a quarter of bookings come from jails that don’t publish charges at all.

Captured

The Captured page lists people on a public wanted list who were later booked into a jail. A match needs the same first name, last name and full date of birth, a booking on or after the warrant date, and extra evidence: the same middle name, the same county, or a charge that fits the warrant. Matches are labelled likely until they are confirmed: by a moderator, or automatically when the booking photo is the same picture as the wanted photo, or when the name and date of birth match along with two of: middle name, the county that issued the warrant, a charge that fits the warrant. Those pages are kept out of search engines.

Data freshness

Counts update every 15 minutes. Jails publish late, so the most recent day can grow for a day or two afterwards. Reports always use the last complete day.

No new bookings have arrived recently from: Arizona (since May 28, 2025), Connecticut (since Dec 28, 2024), Indiana (since Aug 15, 2026), Maryland (since Oct 30, 2026), Maine (since Aug 16, 2025), Michigan (since Nov 2, 2026), Missouri (since Aug 21, 2026), Montana (since Apr 4, 2026), North Dakota (since Apr 4, 2026), New Jersey (since Apr 4, 2026), New Mexico (since Nov 1, 2026), South Carolina (since Aug 4, 2026), South Dakota (since Nov 2, 2026), Utah (since Jun 26, 2025), Virginia (since Apr 5, 2026), Vermont (since Sep 25, 2020), Washington (since Nov 3, 2024), Wyoming (since Apr 4, 2026). Their recent numbers are incomplete.

Of 30,269,743 booking records processed, 6,106,411 (20.2%) had no readable booking date and aren’t counted.

Corrections

Records come from the publishing jails and agencies. To correct a booking record, use the report link on its Arre.st page; for a wanted record, use the takedown form on Suspects.app.