Compare Massachusetts sheriff department costs
Sheriff department cost and staffing across all 14 counties. Click a column header to sort. Hover a column header to see what it measures. Data as of 2026-08-12.
| County | Population | Budget | $/resident | Sworn / 100k res | Custody / 100k res | Beds / 100k res |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Barnstable County | 229,436 | — | — | — | — | — |
| Berkshire County | 128,763 | — | — | — | — | — |
| Bristol County | 576,699 | — | — | — | — | — |
| Dukes County | 20,543 | — | — | — | — | — |
| Essex County | 806,103 | — | — | — | — | — |
| Franklin County | 70,980 | — | — | — | — | — |
| Hampden County | 464,575 | — | — | — | — | — |
| Hampshire County | 153,931 | — | — | — | — | — |
| Middlesex County | 1,623,109 | — | — | — | — | — |
| Nantucket County | 14,065 | — | — | — | — | — |
| Norfolk County | 722,112 | — | — | — | — | — |
| Plymouth County | 529,548 | — | — | — | — | — |
| Suffolk County | 785,443 | — | — | — | — | — |
| Worcester County | 858,898 | — | — | — | — | — |
A note on data vintages and definitions. Population is the US Census Bureau's 2018-2022 American Community Survey 5-year estimate. Sheriff staffing is not currently loaded for Massachusetts, so the staffing columns show a dash throughout this table. They previously carried the US Census Bureau's Census of Governments Employment 2022 figure, which counts a county government's police protection and corrections employment by function code rather than by agency. That total includes the county probation department, the coroner and the crime lab, and it excludes the sheriff's own court services staff, so it does not describe a sheriff's office. Staffing will return here when a county-published figure is loaded. County jail data has not yet been loaded for Massachusetts; the eventual source is expected to be the quarterly Operational Capacity Reports jointly published by the Massachusetts Department of Correction and the Massachusetts Sheriffs' Association (mass.gov/lists/operational-capacity-reports). Nantucket County's Sheriff's Department does not operate a jail or house of correction and instead transports detainees to the Barnstable County Correctional Facility, so its jail column shows "—". Sheriff department budget data has not yet been loaded for Massachusetts; since 2010 all 14 departments have been funded through the Commonwealth budget rather than a county-appropriated one. Sheriff names were collected from the Massachusetts Sheriffs' Association per-county pages and machine-verified against county sources in July 2026; all 14 counties are named.