Where Forsyth County Jail Population Data Lives
County jail population data comes from a few official places. The Sheriff's Office detention center page sets the fixed bed capacity. The live P2C inmate catalog shows a running count of how many people are listed right now. The Sheriff's annual reports hold budget and operations figures by fiscal year. There is no single dashboard that posts a daily audited count for the public.
Each source answers a different question. Capacity tells you the size of the jail. The roster count tells you the scale on a given day. The annual report tells you what the jail costs to run. Read together, they sketch the population picture. The live count updates through the day, while capacity and budget figures hold steady across a year.
For state and national context, federal reports fill the gap. The Bureau of Justice Statistics publishes jail data across the country, though it may not carry a current Forsyth-specific daily count.
Knowing what each source updates saves time. The list below sums up how often each one changes and what it best answers.
- Detention center page: fixed bed capacity; changes rarely.
- P2C inmate catalog: live count; changes through the day.
- Sheriff annual report: budget and operations; once a year.
- BJS reports: state and national jail rates; periodic releases.
None of these gives a single daily audited count for the county. So the honest read is a fixed capacity, a live roster number, and broader context from federal data.
Forsyth County Jail Capacity Overview
The county jail is the Law Enforcement Detention Center. The Sheriff's page lists its bed capacity at 1,016. The building is 400,000 square feet, an eleven-story twin tower with 735 modular steel cells. It holds male and female inmates, both pretrial detainees and sentenced misdemeanants. These capacity figures are county-specific and come straight from the official page.
The state prison in the county is a separate count. Forsyth Correctional Center is run by the Department of Adult Correction, not the Sheriff. Its offender capacity is 248, and it is a minimum-security male facility. State prisoners there are not part of the county jail population. The table below keeps the two facilities apart.
| Facility | Official Capacity | Population Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Law Enforcement Detention Center (county jail) | 1,016 beds | Roster showed 975 on May 25, 2026; audited ADP not located on official pages. |
| Forsyth Correctional Center (state prison) | 248 offenders | NC DAC minimum-security male prison; not part of county jail population. |
Note: The 1,016-bed figure is a fixed capacity from the Sheriff's page, not a count of how many people are held on any given day.
Average Daily Population in Forsyth County
Average daily population, or ADP, is the mean number of people held over a span of time. It is the standard way agencies report jail size across a year. An audited Forsyth County ADP was not found on the official pages checked during research. So this page does not state one as fact.
What is available is a roster snapshot. On May 25, 2026, the live catalog showed 975 people listed. That is a single-day public count, not an annual average. The number changes through the day as people are booked in and released. Treat it as a scale marker, not a settled statistic. The Sheriff's annual report PDF is the place to look for any official ADP or booking totals.
Why the gap matters is simple. A snapshot can run high or low compared with a yearly average. A jail might book many people over a weekend, then release most by midweek. An ADP smooths those swings into one stable figure. Without an audited ADP on the official pages, this page reports the snapshot and labels it as such. That keeps the number honest and easy to check against the live roster.
Forsyth County Jail Utilization Snapshot
Utilization compares the count to the bed capacity. With 975 listed against 1,016 beds, the roster snapshot sits near 96 percent of listed capacity. That is a tight margin, but it reflects one day, not a verified average. A jail can run above or below this on other days.
The detention center budget gives a sense of the operation behind the numbers. The Sheriff's 2024 annual report listed a Detention Operations budget of $35,485,749 for fiscal year 2024-25. The county population that year was reported at 382,590. Those are county-specific figures from the report. They show the cost and the community size, though they do not break the jail count into categories.
A cost-per-inmate figure would tie budget to count, but the official pages checked did not publish one. So this page stops at the raw budget rather than guessing a per-person rate. The annual report is the right place to look for any finer breakdown the Sheriff chooses to publish.
Population Categories and Research Gaps
The public roster shows certain fields for each person. You can see age, gender, race, height, weight, charge, arrest date, court date, bond amount, and booking agency. From those fields you can read broad demographics on a given day. But the roster does not total the population into clean buckets for the public.
Several breakdowns were not found on the official pages checked. These are honest gaps, not zeros. The list below marks what is missing so the data stays clear.
- Pretrial versus sentenced split: not located on official pages.
- Misdemeanor versus felony breakdown: not located.
- Mental health and medical population: not located.
- Cost per inmate per day: not located.
- Federal or immigration holds: "INS DETAINER" text appears in some roster entries, but no official percentage was located.
For the fields that do appear on each record, the Forsyth County inmate records page lists them in full.
These gaps are worth naming plainly. Many jails report a pretrial share or a felony share, but the Forsyth pages checked did not post those totals for the public. Rather than estimate, this page leaves them open. Anyone who needs a category breakdown should ask the Sheriff's Office directly or check a future annual report, since those figures can shift from year to year and were not fixed in the sources reviewed.
State and National Context
County numbers mean more next to broader data. The Bureau of Justice Statistics tracks jail population across states and the nation. Its reports help frame whether a county runs high or low. A look at the BJS site shows where national jail data is published, from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The agency also keeps a legacy site at bjs.gov.
The BJS page above is the source for state and national jail rates that put the Forsyth County count in context. The comparison below sorts which numbers are local and which are broader.
| Scope | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| County jail capacity | 1,016 beds (fixed) | Forsyth County Sheriff (county-specific) |
| County roster snapshot | 975 listed on May 25, 2026 | P2C catalog (county-specific, single day) |
| State and national jail rates | Published per 100,000 residents | Bureau of Justice Statistics (state/national) |
National and state jail rates are reported per 100,000 residents, while the county figures here are raw bed and roster counts. Reading a county count against a national rate calls for care, since the units differ.
Population Trends Over Time
Trends need more than one snapshot. The Sheriff's Office has posted annual reports across recent years, which is the best local source for change over time. The 2024 and 2025 reports carry budget and operations figures by fiscal year. Mining those PDFs is the way to chart bookings and population shifts.
National trend context is available too. A view of the legacy BJS site points to historical jail series, from the BJS legacy site. Those national series show long-run shifts that a single county count cannot.
One snapshot can mislead about a trend. A high day does not prove a rising year, and a low day does not prove a fall. To chart real change in the Forsyth County jail population, you need the same figure across several years. The Sheriff's run of annual reports is the best local series for that work, and the BJS data frames it against the wider national arc.
The legacy page above holds older jail data series useful for spotting national trends behind a county's numbers.
Looking Up Forsyth County Inmates by Name
This page is about population data, not single-person lookups. To find one named person in custody, use the live jail roster instead. The Forsyth County inmate records page covers the roster search, the fields shown, and the booking path.
To confirm a release or set a custody alert, see the released inmates page. For active orders or charges tied to a case, see warrant records. Population figures answer "how many," while name searches answer "who."
Keeping the two apart avoids confusion. The roster is a per-person tool. This page is a per-jail tool. A name does not belong in a population query, and a capacity number does not help you find one person.
How to Read Forsyth County Population Figures
Reading these numbers well means matching each figure to its source. The 1,016-bed capacity is fixed and county-specific. The 975-person count is a single-day roster snapshot, also county-specific. Any rate per 100,000 residents comes from state or national reporting, not from the county.
Mixing those units leads to bad conclusions. A raw county count cannot be compared head to head with a national rate. To compare fairly, you would convert the county count using the county population, then weigh it against the state or national rate from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. The Sheriff's annual report and the BJS data are the two anchors for any honest read of the Forsyth County jail population.
Note: Always label whether a jail figure is a fixed capacity, a single-day count, or a rate, since each one answers a different question about the population.