Cities and counties propose and pass budgets every year. These budgets outline how government leaders plan to spend millions of tax dollars paid by local residents. However, a budget is not simply an accounting document: it is a reflection of what we prioritize and value as a society.

Local budgets are often unwieldy. They are hundreds of pages long and full of dense data tables, graphs, and charts. While they contain vital information on the investments and services residents’ tax dollars will fund, they’re not easy to understand.

City and county budgets have immense consequences on communities and the people who comprise them. The tax dollars that undergird these budgets have the potential to uplift disinvested neighborhoods, expand opportunities for children, and provide residents with vital resources. Unfortunately, research has shown that government leaders are increasingly dedicating more funds to carceral systems such as policing, surveillance, and jails that undermine community well-being and safety, all the while cutting investments to life-affirming social services.

Ultimately, a government’s budget outlines, in no uncertain terms, which people, issue areas, and approaches are important (or not) to government leaders — and by extension, to the public that elected them into power. Therefore, an understanding of how our tax dollars are being spent — and assessing whether those dollars are being used to deliver what communities need to be safe, healthy, and thriving — should be a fundamental tool in our collective practice of democracy.

The annual budget season is a critical time for local communities to use data and advocacy to demand an equitable use of their tax dollars. With this dashboard, we aim to democratize city- and county-level budget data on both the carceral system and social services such as health care, housing, libraries, parks and recreation, and transportation. We hope that this tool makes budget data more transparent, accessible, and actionable for local advocates who are working to redefine safety in their communities by redirecting resources away from punishment and toward collective well-being.

For the numbers across all of the city, county, or city-county pairs in the dataset, click on the Summary View button and select your desired geographic level:

• City for a summary of all of the cities in the dataset,
• County for a summary of all of the counties, and
• Both City and County for a summary of all the cities and counties combined.

For the numbers in a single city, county, or city-county pair, first, click on the Local View or Police View buttons, then select the city/county of interest from the Select Geographic Area dropdown menu. Next, click on the Select City, County, or Both dropdown menu and choose your desired geographic level.

Start by clicking on the Local View button and selecting the city/county of interest from the Select Geographic Area dropdown menu. Then choose your desired geographic level in the Select City, County, or Both dropdown menu.

Once you have selected your city/county of interest and specified which geographic level (city, county, or both) you would like to investigate, you will see a summary that includes (A) the total carceral spending amount, (B) the carceral spending dollars per resident, (C) a breakdown of total spending on police, sheriff, jails, youth detention, other local law enforcement departments (depending on which apply to your local government), and more.

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Interested in the share of a local government’s general fund (“all-purpose” funds over which local governments have the most control) spent on the carceral system? Click on the Police Detail View, choose your desired geographic area and level (city, county, or both), and the corresponding percent of the general fund used on the carceral system can be found in the left-most key data summary (A).

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Local governments have many mechanisms at their disposal to fund agencies and departments. To learn how your city and/or county funds its carceral system, we’ve included a few useful metrics and resources. A major funding source cities and counties use to fund their carceral systems is the general fund, which are “all purpose” funds (derived from local taxes and other sources) over which local governments have the most control. To find the share of your local government’s general fund spent on the carceral system, see the user guide section “I want to know how much of my local government’s general fund was spent on the carceral system in 2022” for instructions. You can also see how much carceral spending per resident comes from a specific funding source (general fund via local taxes, general fund via other sources, or non-general fund) in the (A) Local Tax Spending on Each Activity section on the Local View page.

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Another way that local governments fund programs and institutions outside of the general fund is through “special revenue funds,” which are earmarked by statute for specific purposes. To see which special revenue funds are earmarked for carceral activities in your city/county, scroll down the Police Detail View page to the section titled (B) Revenue Earmarked for the Carceral System. Here, you’ll see the names, descriptions, and amounts of the special revenue funds used for the carceral system. Hover over (if using a personal computer) or tap (if using a tablet or touch-enabled device) the fund you’d like to investigate to reveal a tooltip box, in which you can click the (C) “Special Carceral Funds Details” link to be taken to the specific page in the budget where the fund is referenced. Local governments also use fines and fees, state and federal funds, service charges, and more to fund carceral institutions. The section labeled (D) More Details on Carceral System Revenue on the Police Detail View page provides information on the funding source, the amount provided by the source, the department receiving the funds, and any additional details provided by the city and/or county budget.

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To see a breakdown of how carceral budgets are divided within police and sheriff divisions, click on the Police Detail View button and select your desired geographic area and level (city, county, or both). After choosing a geographic level, scroll down to the (A) Police Divisions or (B) Sheriff Divisions sections. Here, you can choose to display either budget data or the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) staff employed by the respective department; the dashboard defaults to displaying budget data. To toggle between budgetary data or employee numbers, click on the Budget or FTE? dropdown menu and choose either Budget or Employees. (Note: The data that appears in these two sections depend on the geographic level – city, county, or both – that you choose. For example, because sheriff agencies are typically outside of the budgetary purview of most cities, choosing “City” as your geographic level of interest may leave the Sheriff Divisions section blank.)

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Each city or county across the country has its own unique set of carceral departments, social service agencies, and funding sources. This ecosystem of punitive or supportive institutions is in many ways indicative of the activities a local government supports, along with the funding mechanisms it uses to establish or maintain that support. For example, some local governments may set aside local funding for affordable housing development, others may set up police oversight boards, and others still may allocate funds to create specialized policing units. Not only might some cities and counties have agencies or funding streams that others do not, but each local government might also use different terms in their budgets to describe similar carceral departments or funding sources. Conversely, cities and counties may use similar language to describe slightly different agencies or funds. To see what carceral departments and social services are funded in your local budgets (and how your city/county defines them), we provide language (where possible) directly from the city’s or county’s budget on the About the Data page.

The What’s Included section (A) contains general information about how the dashboard was developed; the About [insert selected city and county names here] Data section (B) defines budgetary terms using language provided by the selected city and/or county’s budget; and the Categorization section (C) outlines the carceral or social service programs, departments, or funding streams found in your selected geographic area’s budget(s) and categorizes them (as either “carceral,” “health,” “housing,” “parks and recreation,” “libraries,” or “transportation”) to allow for budgetary comparisons within a city/county and between multiple cities and counties.

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Alongside budgets, the number of people employed to carry out government activities is a direct reflection of a government’s priorities. In that light, the number of workers employed in the carceral system in relation to other social services is of great importance. This dashboard provides data on full-time government employee counts for the carceral system and select government social service departments.

To find the number of government employees in a given city/county who work for the carceral system, click on the Local View, choose your desired geographic area and level (city, county, or both), and the corresponding number of local government employees who work for the carceral system can be found in the middle key data summary (A).

How many full-time employees work in the local government’s carceral system compared to workers in other government social services? Scroll down to the (B) Government Employees, by Activity section. Here, the number of employees is broken down by the geographic level (city or county); simply hover over (if using a personal computer) or tap (if using a tablet or touch-enabled device) the portion of the bar graph you’re interested in to see the exact number of employees working in a given government activity, as well as the pages within the city or county budget that provided the employee data.

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To find the share of government employees in a given city/county who work for the carceral system, click on the Police Detail View, choose your desired geographic area and level (city, county, or both), and the corresponding percent of local government employees who work for the carceral system can be found in the middle key data summary (C). The average cost per employee working in the carceral system can be found in the right-most key data summary (D).

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To see a breakdown of how many employees work for specific policing and sheriff divisions in the carceral system, click on the Police Detail View button and choose your desired geographic area and level (city, county, or both). After selecting a geographic level, scroll down to the (E) Police Divisions or (F) Sheriff Divisions sections. Here, you can choose to display either budget data or the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) staff employed by the respective department; the dashboard defaults to displaying budget data. To display employee numbers, click on the Budget or FTE? dropdown menu and choose Employees.

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There are two ways to compare local governments’ carceral spending budget to that of other social services such as health, housing, libraries, parks and recreation, and transportation — one across all of the city, county, or city-county pairs in the dataset, and the other for a single city, county, or city-county pair.

For the numbers across all of the city, county, or city-county pairs in the dataset, click on the Summary View button and select your desired geographic level. (See the user guide section ”I want to choose the geographic level (city, county, or city-county pair) of the data” for instructions.) After choosing a geographic level, scroll down to the bottom of the dashboard, where you will find the sections labeled (A) Proportion of All Spending and (B) Proportion of General Fund Spending.

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The Proportion of All Spending describes the combined budget of all of the cities, counties, or city-county pairs in the dataset (depending on your chosen geographic level) and the planned share of the combined budgets to be used for carceral, health, housing, libraries, parks and recreation, or transportation spending (reflected as the planned spending for every $100 of the combined budgets).

The Proportion of General Fund Spending describes the combined amount of local tax revenue that all of the local governments at the chosen geographic level plan to collect for their general funds (“all-purpose” funds over which local governments have the most control) and the planned share of the combined general funds to be used for carceral, health, housing, libraries, parks and recreation, or transportation spending (reflected as the planned spending for every $100 of the combined general funds).

For the numbers in a single city, county, or city-county pair, first, click on the Local View button, then select the city/county of interest and your desired geographic level (city, county, or city-county pair).

After selecting a geographic level, scroll down to the (C) Local Tax Spending on Each Activity section to see how much the local government, based on their adopted 2022 budget, spends per resident on the carceral system compared to other social services. Here, the spending per resident is further broken down by the funding source (general fund via local taxes, general fund via other sources, or non-general fund); simply hover over (if using a personal computer) or tap (if using a tablet or touch-enabled device) the portion of the bar graph you’re interested in to see the exact spending amount used from each funding source.

You can also look at the spending per resident in the (D) Spending Per Resident section at the bottom of the Local View. Here, the planned spending per resident on the carceral system is not only compared to that of other social services within the same city/county/city-county pair, but you can also see how the spending per resident for each category compares to other city/county/city-county pairs.

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How does your city and/or county’s carceral spending compare to that of other cities and counties across the country?

To compare total carceral expenditures across cities and/or counties, click on the Summary View button and select your desired geographic level (City for a summary of all of the cities in the dataset, County for a summary of all of the counties, and Both City and County for a summary of all the cities and counties combined). After choosing a geographic level, scroll down to the (A) Communities in the Data section and hover over (if using a personal computer) or tap (if using a tablet or touch-enabled device) the city/county dots on the map to see the total carceral expenditures for the city and/or county.

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To compare the carceral spending per resident across cities and/or counties, the Summary View section titled (B) Carceral Spending per Resident provides a helpful log of carceral spending for every city and/or county in the dataset. The vertical dotted line illustrates the average carceral spending per resident across all of the cities and/or counties in the dataset, providing you with another way to compare spending across multiple jurisdictions.

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You can also compare the spending per resident on the carceral system and other social services in the (C) Spending per Resident section at the bottom of the Local View page. Here, the planned spending per resident on the carceral system for a chosen jurisdiction (the largest dot) can be compared to that of other cities and/or counties (the smaller dots; hover or tap the dots to reveal the city and/or county). Likewise, you can compare local spending on social services (health, housing, libraries, parks and recreation, and transportation) across cities and/or counties in the same way.

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You can also find the exact page number(s) in the city or county budget that describes the spending allocation for police, sheriff, youth detention, and jails while in Local View. To do so, find the section labeled (A) Carceral Spending, by Activity and hover over (if using a personal computer) or tap (if using a tablet or touch-enabled device) the specific carceral institution whose funding you’d like to investigate. A tooltip box should appear outlining the exact page number(s) within the city or county budget where you can find the spending data. To download a PDF of the budget in question, one option is to click the box for the carceral institution you’re interested in; doing so unlocks a link titled “Spending Budget Details” (B) in the tooltip box. Click this link to be taken to the specific page in the budget where the budget details are referenced. You can also download the city or county budget by clicking either the “City Budget” or “County Budget” download links (C) directly below the Select City, County, or Both dropdown menu on the Local View page.

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We’ve made the dashboard's data available as Microsoft Excel spreadsheets (.xlsx files):

• Download the full dataset.
• Download the detailed metadata.

The first file, titled National Equity Atlas Community Budget Database - Public.xlsx, contains the complete budget dataset for all of the cities and counties in the dashboard’s purview, research notes, and URL links to PDF files of every city and county budget in the dataset. The second file, titled Coding template_public.xlsx, is the metadata file that defines every data subsheet and variable found within the main budget dataset spreadsheet.

To download PDF versions of a city’s and/or county’s full budget, see the user guide section “Know where to find the data in the original budget document” for instructions.