This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project - Cleveland, a nonprofit news team covering Ohio’s criminal justice systems.
It has taken years of deliberation, but you can now use a smartphone to find out if your loved ones or friends are in the Cuyahoga County jail.
In recent weeks, Cuyahoga County quietly unveiled The Sheriff App, which updates hourly to list who is booked into the jail.
The move comes seven months after The Marshall Project - Cleveland and Spectrum News 1 reported that the sheriff’s department lagged years behind other counties in allowing the public to search online jail rosters.
Ohio’s other large counties like Franklin, Hamilton, Summit and Lucas have provided their daily roster information online for years. Smaller counties that border Cuyahoga have also done the same. Cuyahoga County had been the exception.
The app, available on Apple and Android platforms, is also a tool used by crime victims seeking assurances that their perpetrator is in custody.
For Cuyahoga County, the app provides an incarcerated person’s age, race and gender, along with booking information that includes a photo, the date and time the person entered the jail and the charges they are facing.
Numerous sheriff’s offices across Ohio use the app, which provides daily jail rosters, push notifications, news and information on how to add money to commissary accounts for incarcerated people. It also allows the public to provide crime tips.
The app has links to an FAQ section for obtaining county services, researching real estate information, identifying registered sex offenders, victim notifications and other items. The app is not designed to report emergencies.
Advocates say having immediate access to jail rosters is vital, not only to law enforcement but to the public.
Dana Acy, owner of Dana Bail Bonds and Insurance Services, applauded the move as she often must try to find people in jail. The app, she said, could also be the first place to check if relatives or friends go missing.
“Familes are always in the dark,” Acy said. “We are moving toward an age of transparency. This is good.”
In the past 15 years, Cuyahoga County has had a revolving door of appointed sheriffs under three county executives.
There have been years of constant turmoil with sheriffs being second-guessed by politicians on whether to allow public access to jail rosters. In 2018, then-Sheriff Cliff Pinkney joined the app. A year later, county officials hit the delete button.
In March, the county’s Board of Control approved a measure to spend more than $84,000 for a firm to maintain and support the app for three years, records show.
Like other counties, Cuyahoga is using smaller-sized images to limit republishing booking photos so companies or others cannot monetize the faces of the incarcerated people.
While the app is now available for the public to download, county officials caution that future updates will be added, including news and information about the sheriff’s department.
The lack of jail access has also affected attorneys and even police detectives, who just like citizens, often have to wait for a jail employee to answer a phone — if the call is answered at all — to learn if someone is in jail.
Chief Deputy Aaron Reese, the sheriff’s second-in-command, helped lead the effort to get the app. He acknowledged the department is behind others, but said the agency hopes to bolster community engagement with the new app.
He cautioned that it could take another year for the app to be used on desktop computers. The county is in the process of selecting a vendor to develop a new jail management system, he said.
“This app is important for us in being transparent and interacting with the community,” Reese said. “We want to make it easy to find information.”