The Detention Center
Cheboygan County Jail
- Operated byCheboygan County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address870 South Main Street, Cheboygan, MI 49721 (co-located with the Sheriff's Office).
- Beds103-bed capacity; houses pre-trial detainees and prisoners sentenced to one year or less.
- Jail AdministratorLt. Brenda Beckwith
Source: Cheboygan County, Michigan - Jail Information · checked 2026-09-19
Transparency rating
2/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✓Beds and daily population
- ✗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 — not published
- ✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds103
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Todd Ross
- Runs the jailThe Sheriff has statutory custody and control of the county jail.
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term, MCL 51.70. Todd Ross won a contested election against the then-undersheriff and took office January 1, 2025.
- Statutory basisMCL 51.75 (county sheriff has charge and 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: Cheboygan County, Michigan - Sheriff's Office · 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.
Cheboygan 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 boardCheboygan County Board of Commissioners; Chair John Wallace, Vice Chair Richard Sangster, per the board's own page. →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- An older cached page at the retired URL /sheriffs-department-143/ still names a prior sheriff ('Dale V. Clarmont'); the county's current, live sheriff page (courts-law-enforcement/sheriffs-department/) confirms Todd Ross as the sitting sheriff, so the stale URL was not used as the sourced fact.
- The jail information page details visitation, mail, telephone (collect calls only, 30-minute limit), and commissary rules but no budget, death, PREA, inspection, contract, bond, or fee-schedule content.
- State inspection/oversight: Michigan county jails operate under the Michigan Department of Corrections' Administrative Rules for Jails and Lockups (promulgated under MCL 791.262), with periodic compliance inspections; Benzie County's own site cites continuous compliance since 2000 with a inspection most recently in 2022, and Calhoun County's 2020 annual report references state and federal inspections conducted that year.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Cheboygan 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