The Detention Center
Grand Traverse County Correctional Facility
- Operated byGrand Traverse County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address320 Washington Street, Traverse City, MI 49684
- BedsNot found on the office's own site
Source: Grand Traverse County, MI - Corrections Division · checked 2026-09-19
Transparency rating
4/10Partial- ✓The jail is named
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✗Beds and daily population — not published
- ✓What it costs taxpayers
- ✗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
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Michael D. Shea
- Runs the jailGrand Traverse County Sheriff's Office operates the Grand Traverse County Correctional Facility
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term, MCL 51.70
- Statutory basisMCL 51.75 gives the sheriff 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: Grand Traverse County, MI - Current 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.
Grand Traverse 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 boardGrand Traverse County Board of Commissioners: Scott Sieffert (Chair, District 8), Brian McAllister (D1), Lauren Flynn (D2), Ashlea Walter (D3), Fern Spence (D4), Rob Hentschel (D5), Darryl Nelson (D6), TJ Andrews (D7), Penny Morris (D9) →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- The Sheriff's Office site links to an 'Inmate Information' page (https://www.gtcountymi.gov/1814/Inmate-Information) advertised from the Services and Sheriff's Office pages, but that link returned a 404 error when opened directly, so an online roster could not be confirmed.
- The county's own annual Revenue & Expenditure Budget Detail PDFs are published at the Archive Center, but the 2023 Expenditure Budget Detail PDF opened did not show a Sheriff/Corrections line item in the portion retrievable via fetch; a news article (Traverse Ticker, 2025) references county budget discussions including new positions, but that is a news source, not the office's own site, and was not used for the audit checks.
- A March 2026 local news article (9&10 News) referenced the county addressing jail overcrowding with new boarding agreements, but this was not confirmed on the county's own site and is not cited as a source.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Grand Traverse 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