The Detention Center
Kalamazoo County Jail
- Operated byKalamazoo County Sheriff's Office
- Jail/Sheriff's Office address1500 Lamont, Kalamazoo, MI 49048
- BedsNot found on the county's own site
Source: Kalamazoo County Sheriff's Office · checked 2026-09-19
Transparency rating
1/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✗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 Richard C. Fuller III
- Runs the jailThe Sheriff's Office operates the Kalamazoo County Jail at 1500 Lamont, Kalamazoo, per the Sheriff's Office site
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term, MCL 51.70
- Statutory basisMCL 51.75 gives the elected county 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: Kalamazoo 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.
Kalamazoo 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 boardhttps://www.kalcounty.gov/479/Board-of-Commissioners →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- Kalamazoo County's general government website (kalcounty.gov) does not list a public-facing Sheriff/Jail department page in its own site index; the Sheriff's Office content found (on the legacy kalcounty.com domain) confirms the current sheriff and jail address but not capacity, budget, PREA, inspection, contract, bond, fee, or roster information.
- The county's own 'Prisoner Search' page (kalcounty.gov/812/Prisoner-Search) directs the public to the Michigan Department of Corrections' state prisoner locator rather than providing a county jail roster of its own.
- The Sheriff's Office page lists several employee union contracts (Command Staff, Sergeants, Deputies Association) but these are labor agreements, not jail operations/services contracts, so they were not counted toward the 'contracts' check.
- A FY2026 county budget book exists via a ClearGov portal (kalcounty.gov/budgetbook26) but its content is JavaScript-rendered and no Sheriff's Office/jail line item could be confirmed from the page actually opened.
- State inspection/oversight: Michigan county jails are subject to inspection under the Michigan Department of Corrections' Administrative Rules for Jails and Lockups; no county-published inspection reports were found on kalcounty.gov or kalcounty.com.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Kalamazoo 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