NYRB: "[P]ower is what all sherrifs have in common. They and their deputies run county jails that admit some 10 million people a year. Sherrifs report to neither the local police chief nor any other elected official, so [...] many come to see themselves, and to behave, as a law unto themselves."
"Sherrifs employ a quarter of all sworn law enforcement officers and control 85 percent of local jails. Their offices are responsible for 30 percent of killings by law enforcement, and at least one thousand inmates die every year while in sherrifs' custody."
"[T]he scandal-plagued Los Angeles County Sherrif's Department, the country's biggest, employs an astonishing 20,000 people with an annual budget of nearly $4 billion, and its jails hold a daily average of 13,000 inmates."
90 percent of sherrifs are white men (Jeff Sessions referred, in 2018, to "[t]he office of sherrif" as "a critical part of the Anglo-American heritage of law enforcement")