The Detention Center
Iosco County Jail
- Operated byIosco County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address428 W. Lake Street, Tawas City, MI 48763
- CapacityRated capacity of 63 beds; facility has served the community for more than 50 years
- Jail AdministratorCapt. Brian Golden
Source: Iosco County, Michigan - Jail Information · checked 2026-09-19
Transparency rating
5/10Partial- ✓The jail is named
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✓Beds and daily population
- ✓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 (jail described as having served the community for more than 50 years, i.e., built circa mid-20th century)
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds63 (rated capacity)
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Scott D. Frank
- Runs the jailIosco County Sheriff's Office operates the Iosco County Jail
- 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: Iosco 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.
Iosco 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 boardIosco County Board of Commissioners: Alexander Hardy (D1, Tawas City), Terry Dutcher (D2, Oscoda), Charles Finley (D3, South Branch), Brian Loeffler (D4, Tawas City), Donald Jay O'Farrell (D5, Whittemore) →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- The Sheriff's Office page 'Bond, Fines & Costs' states a $12.00 booking fee 'required by law' and a $20.00 per day housing charge for sentenced inmates, with a 50% reduction on housing debt if paid within 90 days of release.
- The 2025 Year End Audit (published on the Controller's page) reports actual FY2025 expenditures of $1,006,268 for the Sheriff function and $2,260,157 for the Jail function, within combined General Fund Public Safety expenditures of $3,597,950.
- Bonds and booking fees are also processed through the third-party JailATM.com system, linked from the Sheriff's Office's own page.
- No inmate roster, PREA policy, inspection records, or contracts were found published on the county's own site.
- Note: the domain ioscocounty.org (used in the Jail Administrator's email address) and the parked domain ioscocounty.com are distinct from the county's actual working website, iosco.net, which is the domain used for all official content citations here.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Iosco 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