Editor’s note: This article Governance‘s Summer 2024 issue. You can subscribe here.
Rick Ramsey is running for a fourth term as sheriff in Monroe County, Florida this fall, and he should have no trouble winning: He ran unopposed in his two previous re-election campaigns, in 2016 and 2020, and raised just $3 million in total in his campaign coffers.
Ramsey’s ability to continue a long political career without facing an opponent is not unusual, at least when it comes to sheriffs. Sheriff Michael Ash of Hampden County, Massachusetts, served 42 years without facing a single candidate for reelection. Sheriff Karen Talton of Houston County, Georgia, had already served more than 50 years when she announced she would not run for reelection this year.
Our new book, the first extensive academic study to focus on sheriffs in over a century, argues that the elected nature of the sheriff’s office fails to provide a democratic check on sheriffs and their actions. There are several reasons why elections fail to provide accountability: Sheriff elections are often uncompetitive, the number of candidates is limited, and incumbents themselves narrow and limit the field. In recent elections, 40 percent of sheriffs have been elected unopposed.
Political isolationism also makes women obsolete. Nationwide, 98% of sheriffs are men and 92% are white. While the number of female prosecutors increased by 34% between 2015 and 2019, there has been no similar increase in women holding public office as sheriffs or running for that office.
Law enforcement experience is a given, with 99% having experience working in the field and 78% having experience working in their own office prior to their election. In a 2021 survey, over half of sheriffs attended high school in their current county.
Ramsey epitomizes that enduring trust. He began working for the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office in 1987 at age 21. A highly decorated deputy, he rose to become deputy chief and led various divisions before finally assuming the position of chief. His office has a 43 percent crime-solving rate, far surpassing the rate of offices of its size in other Florida counties.
Sheriffs occupy a special place in the American political system: they are bureaucrats with the legitimate right to injure and kill, they are powerful elected officials with few limits on their power, and they create and implement a wide range of important policies.
The long history of the office
This role dates back to at least 10th-century Norman England. Beginning in colonial times, southern sheriffs were regularly tasked with organizing slave patrols and maintaining general control over slaves. Because sheriffs had to fund their offices through fees and fines, the rewards for capturing slaves were a strong motivator.
States typically assign broad responsibilities to sheriffs, such as securing court facilities and running jails, maintaining the peace and apprehending criminals, and giving sheriffs additional responsibilities ranging from serving warrants and facilitating work release programs to managing police dog programs.
Their powers vary from region to region and even within states. In the Northeast and South, more populous counties have independent police agencies that perform most law enforcement activities, with sheriffs responsible only for jail management and courthouse security.
Sheriffs frequently emphasize their power and autonomy, pointing out that while in some states the specific powers of the sheriff’s office are set forth by statute, sheriffs are independently elected and their powers are generally set forth in the state constitution. Of the 46 states that elect sheriffs, 38 states created the office in their original constitutions, while the other eight adopted sheriff elections after statehood. According to sheriffs, the constitutional origins of the sheriff’s office distinguish it from other law enforcement positions, promote it from department to office, and protect it from influence or control by other local leaders.
In recent years, a significant number of sheriffs have refused to enforce laws and regulations on issues such as gun control, immigration enforcement, and COVID-19 mandates. “Sheriffs’ offices across the country are our best defense against growing state and federal tyranny,” one sheriff said. “I never believed this until I personally, as a sheriff, had to fight against the unconstitutional decisions being imposed on our country and our state in the name of progressive ideals.”
Voters have few choices
Sheriffs argue that elections make the office independent and directly accountable to voters, but studies of local elections have found that residents generally don’t vote based on the sheriff’s performance, their criminal justice policy preferences, or even local crime rates. Instead, residents vote based on the economy, ideological assumptions, and preferences.
When it comes to sheriffs, voters often have few choices. Sheriffs are in a unique position because many rural counties are small in population to begin with, making experience in local law enforcement a virtual prerequisite. Sheriffs control their political competitors by having direct control over those who might one day compete for the office.
Sheriffs control the pool of potential competitors and control most of the individuals who may one day come into conflict with them.
The need to suppress potential opponents among his subordinates leads sheriffs to commit many bad acts. Deputies who run against their superiors face demotion and sometimes even firing. Deputies do not need to actually run to face such behavior from the sheriff. Many sheriffs are punished for merely supporting the sheriff’s opponents. When a sheriff is sued for retaliation, it is the county, not the sheriff himself, that pays the settlement.
In the sheriff’s office, the staff, budget, and jail can be used for political gain. Control of the jail allows the sheriff to operate in a kind of cronyism, with many county employees relying on him for their jobs. Since the 1990s, the sheriff’s share of the county staff and payroll has increased by 20 percent. With more staff, the sheriff has more ability to control potential political opponents.
Most of the sheriff’s budget requests are respected by the county commissioners and other county boards, and when they are not, the sheriff has been known to issue warning statements and social media posts such as “maybe we should consider relocating to an area with adequate law enforcement services.”
Sheriffs also raise funds by charging other jurisdictions fees for housing prisoners. More controversially, sheriffs use civil asset forfeiture as a means to purchase equipment. In civil asset forfeiture, law enforcement agencies seize funds and property from people involved in the criminal justice system. While some of this revenue is derived after a conviction, law enforcement agencies derive the majority of their forfeiture revenue from civil asset forfeiture, which does not require a conviction for a crime. Sheriffs’ offices are more likely than police departments to report revenue from asset forfeiture. Despite criticism of its overuse, sheriffs have strongly resisted state legislative efforts to curb the practice.
PR Patrol
Nearly all sheriffs run jails and are responsible for courthouse security, but most also engage in a wide range of community activities that fall under the umbrella of “law enforcement” or peacekeeping. Can a sheriff run a summer camp for children every year? Yes, many do.
Sheriffs can enforce the law on land, water, and air. In Monroe County, which includes Key West, the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office has issued more tickets for under- and over-sized lobsters than the entire state combined. An Instagram post from the sheriff’s office showed K9 Deputy Mako measuring lobsters as he patrolled with his handler.
K9 Sheriff Mako also appears frequently in other promotional efforts: on tables during drug busts, among kids participating in the Sheriff’s Office’s Office Explorers program in the summer, and as a crossing guard around pedestrians reminding drivers to slow down. In fact, K9 Sheriff Mako appears as frequently as Sheriff Ramsey on the Sheriff’s Office’s social media accounts.
Ramsay’s office runs an animal farm in an outdoor area beneath the prison, housing more than 150 animals, including Hank the armadillo, June Carter the opossum, and Bamboo Bamboo the alpaca. It is run by inmates at the prison and is open to the public for free two weekends a month.
As expected, the duties of a Florida sheriff don’t include running an animal shelter, nor do they include the neighborhood cleanups organized by Ramsey and his landscaping truck. But in a video for new staff, he says, “It’s proven that cleaner neighborhoods are safer. That’s why the sheriff’s office cleans up our neighborhoods. We’re not just focused on crime prevention and crime investigation, we’re focused on quality of life. That’s how we prevent crime from happening. It’s really important that people get to know us, like us and trust us.”
Like many sheriffs, Ramsey sees his job as reminding the public what a sheriff is and what it does. Sheriff’s offices are working to make themselves more visible in the community. Deputies hand out coloring books to children, as well as stickers and badges with the sheriff’s name on them. The Orange County, Florida, sheriff’s office is rolling out a mobile video game theater with 11 big screens to better engage with kids.
Sheriffs often view community engagement efforts as part of a broader public safety plan, but these efforts usually have another unstated goal: helping to get the sheriff re-elected. Sheriffs engage in image management of the office, working to implant an image of the office in the minds of voters. Sheriffs rarely face tough competition in elections, but they work hard to keep it that way.
source: The Power of the Badge: Sheriffs and Inequality in the United States The book, by Emily M. Faris and Miriyah R. Holman, is scheduled to be published in September by the University of Chicago Press.
