The Detention Center
Alpena County Sheriff's Office & Jail
- Operated byAlpena County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address4900 M32 W, Alpena, MI 49707
- Bond feesPer the office's own site: booking fee $12 per jail entry; warrant fee $10 if applicable; JailATM online bond fee $2.50 or 10% (whichever greater) by card, $2 by cash
- Commissary$150 weekly purchase cap; booking/warrant fees must be paid before commissary funds are used, per the office's own site
Source: Alpena County - Corrections & Jail · checked 2026-09-19
Transparency rating
4/10Partial- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✗Beds and daily population — not published
- ✗What it costs taxpayers — not published
- ✗Deaths in custody — not published
- ✗PREA audits — not published
- ✗Independent inspection — not published
- ✗Who else it holds, and for how much — not published
- ✓How to post bond
- ✓Phone, video and commissary rates
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Erik W. Smith
- Runs the jailAlpena County Sheriff's Office operates the Alpena County Jail
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term, MCL 51.70; per the office's own site Sheriff Smith was sworn in on May 20, 2022
- Statutory basisMCL 51.75 gives the sheriff custody of the county jail
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Alpena County - Sheriff & Undersheriff · checked 2026-09-19
The Judges
Michigan circuit and district court judges are elected on a nonpartisan ballot to six-year terms under Mich. Const. art. VI — state judicial officers, not county officials.
Alpena County Circuit Court
- Not found
- The county's bond schedule
- Share of the jail population held pretrial
- Median time from booking to first appearance
Source: the state judiciary · checked 2026-09-19
The County Commissioners
They pay for the jail. The sheriff runs it.
- What they controlThe detention budget, the building itself, and the agreements that let other agencies rent its beds.
- What they don'tDay-to-day operations. The sheriff is separately elected and answers to voters, not to the board.
- The boardNot found
- Where the jail money is decidedNot found
Notes on the record
- The Corrections & Jail page links to a 'Current Inmates' roster hosted at a vendor system (omsweb.public-safety-cloud.com), which is the office's designated jail-specific roster tool rather than a generic multi-jurisdiction aggregator; the county page linking to it was used as the cited URL.
- The office's own site publishes a detailed fee schedule: booking fee $12, warrant fee $10, card/cash bond processing fees, and commissary deposit fees ($3 flat or $3/10% by kiosk).
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Alpena County and what it costs the people who live here. Nationally, almost 77% of the people who died in local jails in 2019 had not been convicted of anything, and suicide was the leading single cause of those deaths (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Mortality in Local Jails, 2000–2019).
How much is your sheriff — and your judge — costing you?
Your VOTE is POWERFUL.
The sheriff who runs this jail is elected. So are the commissioners who pay for it.
Names verified 2026-09-19 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered