The Detention Center
Delta County Correctional Facility
- Operated byDelta County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address2800 College Avenue, Escanaba, MI 49829
- Beds156-bed capacity, supervised by 28 full-time corrections officers; the facility reports overcrowding and is not accepting sentenced individuals from courts outside Delta County
Source: Delta County - Correctional Facility · checked 2026-09-19
Transparency rating
4/10Partial- ✓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
- ✓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
- Beds156
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Todd Tardiff
- Runs the jailThe Delta County Sheriff's Office operates the Delta County Correctional Facility at 2800 College Avenue, Escanaba
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term, MCL 51.70
- Statutory basisMCL 51.75 (sheriff has 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: Delta County - 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.
Delta 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 boardFive districts (John Malnar, Patrick Johnson, Christine Williams, Kelli vanGinhoven, Matthew Jensen); chair not identified on the page →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- Posting Bond page states bonds can be posted at a Sheriff's Office kiosk 24/7 or online via eXpress Account, or at the 94th District Court for third-party bonds, and cites a $12.00 booking fee used for officer training and inmate programs under state law.
- Correctional Facility page notes current overcrowding and that the jail is not accepting sentenced individuals from outside courts.
- State inspection/oversight: Michigan Department of Corrections conducts county jail inspections under state administrative rules; no inspection report was found published on the county's own site.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Delta 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