The Detention Center
Kalkaska County Jail (Corrections Division)
- Operated byKalkaska County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address605 N. Birch Street, Kalkaska, MI 49646
- Capacity62 inmates, per the Sheriff's Office's own Jail Operations page
- Inmate populationHouses pre-trial detainees and those sentenced to no more than one year
Source: Kalkaska County Sheriff's Office - Jail Operations · 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
- ✗Who else it holds, and for how much — not published
- ✓How to post bond
- ✗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
- Beds62 (per Sheriff's Office Jail Operations page)
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff David Wagner
- Runs the jailThe Sheriff's Office operates the Kalkaska County Correctional Facility, per the Sheriff's Office site's Corrections division page
- 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: Kalkaska County, Michigan - 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.
Kalkaska 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.kalkaskacounty.net/government/board_of_commissioners/index.php →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- The Sheriff's Office's own Jail Operations page states the facility has received '100% compliance awards' across four years of Michigan Department of Corrections inspections, shared with only four other Michigan counties; this is a compliance-award mention rather than posted inspection reports, but it is the office's own published statement about state inspection results, so 'inspections' is marked yes.
- Bond information found is limited to a note that bonds posted other than through a bonding agency must be made in cash, plus a referral to 87B District Court.
- No inmate roster/lookup tool, budget breakdown, PREA policy, operational contracts, or fee schedule were found published on the Sheriff's Office or county site.
- State inspection/oversight: Michigan county jails are subject to inspection under the Michigan Department of Corrections' Administrative Rules for Jails and Lockups; Kalkaska County's own site references achieving MDOC compliance awards but does not post the underlying inspection reports.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Kalkaska 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