Everyone who was going to be arrested in 2012 has already been arrested and accounted for in “BOOKED,” our who’s-who guide to the Humboldt County Jail. That being so, perhaps it’s time to look at some statistics and draw some conclusions. The following is the first installment of a look at the tale told about Humboldt County crime and law enforcement, as told through the year in BOOKED.

First, a disclaimer: We’re missing one day. For some reason we have been unable to find a booking sheet for June 26, 2012. It seems the Sheriff’s Office never published it, and since that date was before we officially launched this project we never made a big deal of it. So take all the numbers we’re going to throw at you below and mentally readjust them for the fact that June 26 is not taken into account.

(On the other hand, this was a leap year. So maybe you could say that everything is smoothed out.)

All told, 10,103 people were booked into the Humboldt County jail in 2012 on 12,728 charges. Of the 10,103 people booked into jail, 4,037 were there on felony charges, 6,019 were there for misdemeanors and 28 for infractions. (There was no available information for the remaining 19.)

The following is a table of the top 10 holding charges most frequently thrown at arrestees:

Let’s be perfectly clear, here, because the technical terminology can trip one up. The people arrested and booked on these charges are not yet “charged” with any offense at all (much less convicted). That’s the District Attorney’s job. There’s no clear guidelines on what you’re supposed to call the suspected violations that land you in jail, as far as I know. I’ve gone with “holding charges” above.

Now let’s take a look at who’s doing the arresting. The following pie chart gives you a sense of which police agencies throwing people in the the slammer with greatest frequency. You can hover over the slices of the pie for raw numbers and some more information:

If Eureka looks like it’s doing way more than its fair share of arresting, that’s because it is. (More on this tomorrow.) Below is a the number of arrests per 1,000 population (according to the 2010 census) for each of the five cities with their own police agency.

(Note: The figures for Arcata take into account arrests made by both the Arcata Police Department and Humboldt State’s University Police Department.)

That’s Part I. Come back tomorrow for more!