Crawford County, Michigan — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

Crawford County Corrections Center

Operated byCrawford County Sheriff's Office
Jail address200 W. Michigan Ave, Grayling, MI 49738
Beds53 beds; houses pre-trial detainees, sentenced prisoners of one year or less, and temporarily houses ICE, other-county, and MDOC inmates

Source: Crawford County, Michigan - Corrections/Jail · checked 2026-09-19

Transparency rating

4/10Partial

✓The jail is named
✓Who is in custody
✓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
✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Crawford County publishes about a jail its taxpayers own, checked 2026-09-19. Nothing here says the jail is run well or badly. Every mark moves the moment the county posts the document.

The Building

You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.

Year builtNot found
Original costNot found
Paid for byNot found
Beds53

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Ryan Swope

Runs the jailThe Crawford County Sheriff's Office operates the Crawford County Corrections Center at 200 W. Michigan Ave, Grayling
How the office is filledElected, four-year term, MCL 51.70
Statutory basisMCL 51.75 (sheriff has custody of the county jail)

Still needed

Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail

Source: Crawford County, Michigan - Sheriff · 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.

Crawford County Circuit Court

Not found

Still needed

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 (commissioner list page is password-protected) →
Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →

Notes on the record

Corrections/Jail page describes a 24/7 online bond payment system and lists inmate programs (mental health, DBT/CBT classes, jail ministry, GED, peer recovery coach).
The Sheriff's Office maintains a separate roster/inmate-search subdomain (crawfordcountysheriff.org) that is part of the same office.
State inspection/oversight: Michigan Department of Corrections conducts county jail inspections under state administrative rules, but no inspection report was found published on the county's own site.

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Crawford 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