The manuscript record book lists by date the name of each prisoner committed to the prison along with the crime for which he was committed, and has columns headed "where committed" and "how committed". Under "where committed" is indicated the institution to which the prisoner was sent; in addition to the Parish Prison, there are also entries for the Workhouse, the Police Jail, the House of Refuge, and the Insane Asylum. Apparently these other facilities shared quarters or were adjacent to the prison during a portion of the period covered (there are few, if any, listings for the Workhouse or the Police Jail after 1852). The column "how committed" contains various kinds of information for different prisoners and for different time periods. In some cases it refers to the court ordering the commitment, while in others it lists the term of the prisoner's sentence or some reference to other action involving him.

The officer or agency responsible for maintaining this volume is not clear. There is a handwritten label attached to the book's spine that reads "Dept. of Police, 1842 [sic]." This suggests the possibility that the record was kept by the police as a means of keeping track of the whereabouts of prisoners, rather than as a record of the prison itself or of the Sheriff's Office. Because of its similarities to records of other jail/prison facilities, however, the record has been classified along with those records.