The Detention Center
Livingston County Jail
- Operated byLivingston County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address150 S Highlander Way, Howell, MI 48843
- Jail AdministratorLieutenant Tarneseia Pringle, per the county's own Jail page
- BookingsProcesses over 5,000 bookings annually, with an average incarceration length of 14 days, per the Sheriff's Office About Us page
Source: Livingston County, MI - Jail · checked 2026-09-19
Transparency rating
6/10Partial- ✓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
- ✓How to post bond
- ✓Phone, video and commissary rates
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year built1972
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds411 (current rated capacity)
Since then
- Built 1972 with capacity of 62
- 1996 expansion to 205
- 2003 expansion to 254
- 2015/2016 expansion to 411
The Sheriff
Sheriff Michael Murphy
- Runs the jailThe Sheriff's Office Jail Division operates the Livingston County Jail, per the county's own Jail 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: Livingston County, MI - 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.
Livingston 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://milivcounty.gov/boc/ →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- The Sheriff's Office About Us page states an $18 million annual operating budget and 165 full/part-time personnel, and notes law enforcement service contracts with Tyrone and Putnam townships.
- The Jail's Inmate Information page publishes bail bonds information and lodging fees, but the site includes a disclaimer that LivingstonCountyJail.org is a separate, unofficial site (not used as a source here).
- No inmate roster, death records, PREA policy, or inspection reports were found published on the county's own site.
- State inspection/oversight: Michigan county jails are subject to inspection under the Michigan Department of Corrections' Administrative Rules for Jails and Lockups (authorized under MCL 791.262 et seq.); no county-published inspection reports were found on milivcounty.gov.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Livingston 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