The Detention Center
Chippewa County Correctional Facility
- Operated byChippewa County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address325 Court Street, Sault Ste. Marie, MI 49783 (Corrections/Jail line: 906-635-7620).
- BedsNot found
- StaffingJail Administrator, Assistant Jail Administrator, two Corporals, 13 full-time and 12 part-time Corrections Officers, 2 Community Service Supervisors, 3 Cooks, and a facility physician, operating 24/7.
Source: Chippewa County, Michigan - Correctional Facility · checked 2026-09-19
Transparency rating
5/10Partial- ✓The jail is named
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✗Beds and daily population — not published
- ✗What it costs taxpayers — not published
- ✗Deaths in custody — not published
- ✓PREA audits
- ✗Independent inspection — not published
- ✓Who else it holds, and for how much
- ✓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 Michael D. Bitnar
- Runs the jailThe Sheriff has statutory custody and control of the Chippewa County Correctional Facility.
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term, MCL 51.70. Bitnar was appointed Sheriff in October 2016 and elected in November 2016; he has been re-elected since.
- Statutory basisMCL 51.75.
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Chippewa 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.
Chippewa 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 boardChippewa County Board of Commissioners; chair elected annually by the board (current chair not named on the page reviewed). →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- The Correctional Facility page documents extensive PREA (sexual-abuse prevention and intervention) policy, including third-party reporting, medical care for victims, transgender-inmate protections, and staff-training/retaliation-prevention measures.
- The same page names contracted outside vendors for inmate calling (Securus Technologies), account funding (Access Corrections), and inmate care packages (MyCarePack).
- Bond information is split between the Sheriff's Office correctional-facility page ('Bonds posted must be in cash or through bail bondsman. Checks and foreign currency will not be accepted.') and the 91st District Court's own bonds page.
- The Sheriff's Fees page lists civil-process paper fees, three inter-island ferry charges ($20 each for the Drummond, Neebish, and Sugar Island ferries), and a $1.05/mile service-mileage fee.
- 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 Chippewa 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