The Detention Center
Gogebic County Jail
- Operated byGogebic County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address100 W. Iron St., Bessemer, MI 49911
- BedsNot found (capacity not stated on the county's own pages)
- Jail AdministratorSgt. Jay Kangas
Source: Gogebic County, MI - Jail · checked 2026-09-19
Transparency rating
0/10Closed- ✗The jail is named — not published
- ✗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 — 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
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Jorge Cruz
- Runs the jailThe Gogebic County Sheriff's Office operates the Gogebic County Jail at 100 W. Iron St., Bessemer
- 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: The Globe (Ironwood, MI) - "New sheriff in town: Cruz takes lead" · 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.
Gogebic 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 (county board pages blocked to automated access) →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- The county's Sheriff's Office page, opened at https://www.gogebiccountymi.gov/government/county_offices/sheriff_s_office.php, currently names Pete Matonich as sheriff; this conflicts with a dated, specific January 2, 2025 local news report (The Globe, Ironwood) stating Jorge Cruz -- previously undersheriff for three years -- was sworn in as Gogebic County's new sheriff on January 1, 2025, after winning the November 5, 2024 election. Because a sheriff who has left office is a worse error than 'Not found,' this entry records Jorge Cruz as the current sheriff per the more recent, dated report, flags the county page as apparently unupdated, and marks the 'named' audit check itself as 'no' since the office's own current page does not correctly identify the sitting sheriff.
- The Jail page (same domain) states 'Jail Forms' has 'No documents' currently available, and does not give bed capacity, budget, deaths, PREA, inspections, contracts, bond, or fee information.
- The main county homepage (gogebic.gov and www.gogebiccountymi.gov root/most subpages) blocks automated fetching via robots.txt; only the sheriff's-office and jail subpages were reachable, which limited verification of the Board of Commissioners chair and other office-wide disclosures.
- 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 Gogebic 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