Vera Justice Institute Data for the Hays County Jail
Hays County unveiled a public-facing jail population dashboard in March 2021. The goal of the dashboard is to make time, accurate data about the Hays County Jail population available to the public.
The dashboard was developed in partnership with the Vera Institute of Justice’s ‘In Our Backyards’ (IOB) initiative. The IOB team developed the innovative Jail Population Project to provide granular, real-time data about local jail populations. The anonymized information Vera receives from Hays County is used to compute jail population statistics, disaggregated by categories such as bail amount, charge, gender, and race, to provide insights into how counties and states are using their jails.
The data is refreshed every two weeks. See this helpful guide to using the dashboard.
With this public-facing dashboard, Hays County has underscored a commitment to understanding how jail incarceration impacts the community’s diverse population. It also engages both the justice system stakeholders and community members in efforts to safely and meaningfully reduce the jail population and otherwise improve the systems that people rely on for justice and safety.
Stakeholders and community members can now ask more detailed and informed questions, monitor real-time change, identify gaps in needed services and resources, and implement better policy. Hays County’s innovative approach provides a national model for counties committed to data transparency, community engagement, and ongoing oversight of local justice systems.
Here is a shareable link to the dashboard of data for the Hays County Jail.