Sheriffs and jail administrators have relied on three traditional resources when collecting and analyzing data, including statistics coursework, information systems coursework or computer programming, and research methods. This manual explains why data should be collected, how to identify the necessary information, how to organize a data collection, how to locate and capture that information, how to put that data together, how to analyze the information, how to interpret results, and how to share those results most effectively. Some additional resources described here include a list of common data elements that jails should collect, a description of the skills needed to collect those data, a list of common places where data elements are found in local jails, a model manual information system, a sample data collection sheet, a short introduction to descriptive statistics, a series of programmed learning exercises, and sample charts and graphs. 49 tables, 30 figures, and 15 appendixes