Mackinac County, Michigan — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

Mackinac County Jail

Operated byMackinac County Sheriff's Office
Jail location100 South Marley Street, St. Ignace, MI 49781 (Sheriff's Office address); a separate jail street address was not confirmed on the page opened
BedsRated capacity of 28 inmates
Year built1972
AccreditationSite states it 'was the first jail in the country to be Accredited by the American Correctional Association to the Core Jail Standards for jails' in 2009, and that it meets Michigan Department of Corrections standards for local jails

Source: Mackinac County - Mackinac County Jail · 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 — not published
✗Who else it holds, and for how much — not published
✓How to post bond
✓Phone, video and commissary rates

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Mackinac County publishes about a jail its taxpayers own, checked 2026-09-19. Nothing here says the jail is run well or badly. Every mark moves the moment the county posts the document.

The Building

You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.

Year built1972
Original costNot found
Paid for byNot found
Beds28

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Edward M. Wilk

Runs the jailThe Sheriff's Office operates the Mackinac 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

Still needed

Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail

Source: Mackinac 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.

Mackinac County Circuit Court

Not found

Still needed

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.mackinaccounty.net/departments/commissioners/ →
Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →

Notes on the record

The jail page states GovPay accepts payments for booking fees, housing, tether fees, and cash bonds, and describes video visitation, phone service, and commissary options.
The page notes the facility meets Michigan Department of Corrections standards for local jails and was ACA Core Jail Standards accredited in 2009, but does not publish inspection reports, death records, PREA data, budget figures, or contracts.
What was tried: attempted to load additional Mackinac County pages (homepage, about-county page, direct crawl of sheriff's office page) via automated fetch; several returned 403/empty responses, so some information (full commissioner roster, budget) could not be confirmed.
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.); the Mackinac County Jail page itself states the facility meets MDOC standards for local jails, but no inspection reports were found published on mackinaccounty.net.

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Mackinac 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