The Detention Center
Marquette County Jail
- Operated byMarquette County Sheriff's Office
- BedsThe '80-bed Marquette County Jail may also house up to 10 federal inmates,' per the county's own Jail Services page
- DescriptionThree-story facility with blocks on each floor classifying inmates by severity of offense; described on the site as 'one of the top-rated jails in the State of Michigan'
- Jail AdministratorCaptain Brian H. Steede, Corrections Division, per the Sheriff's Office staff listing and jail visitation page
- 2025 activity1,058 booked inmates as of 9/30/2025 (2024 actual: 1,657; 2026 projected: 1,500), per the county's own Rehabilitation Division budget page
Source: Marquette County, MI - Marquette County Jail (Jail Services) · 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 builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds80 (may also house up to 10 federal inmates)
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Gregory S. Zyburt
- Runs the jail'The Sheriff is an elected officer responsible for... operation of the county jail, including the constitutional and statutory provisions relating to the care and custody of inmates,' per the county's own Sheriff biography page
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term, MCL 51.70; voted into office January 1, 2017, currently serving his third term, per the county's own page
- Statutory basisMCL 51.75 gives the elected county sheriff custody of the county jail; the department budget page separately cites MCLA 51.68 for the Sheriff's general law-enforcement powers
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Marquette County, MI - Gregory S. Zyburt, 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.
Marquette 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.co.marquette.mi.us/county_government/board_of_commissioners/index.php →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- Bond/commissary deposits are handled through jailatm.com per the county's own Jail Services page, and the Housing/Medical Reimbursement page states a $60.00/day housing rate charged to inmates under Public Act 118 of 1984, billed after release, with medical/mental-health costs billed immediately.
- The Sheriff's department budget page lists line items including service contracts/agreements with Marquette Township, Tilden Township, and Richmond Township, and a Weighmaster Contract, evidencing contracts published by the office.
- The Rehabilitation Division budget page (101-351.000) publishes a performance table with booked-inmate counts by year but not dollar figures for the jail specifically; a separate Detention Center cost center (101-352.000) states that as of 2025 that cost center was inactive with jail staff instead budgeted under the Rehabilitation line — an internal budget classification note, not evidence the jail itself is closed (2025 booking counts through Sept. 30 confirm ongoing operations).
- No inmate death records, PREA policy, or jail inspection reports were found published on the county's own site.
- What was tried: this domain's robots.txt disallows most automated crawling except a short allowlist of named bots; pages already linked from an opened page were still read and are cited above.
- 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 Rehabilitation Division's stated objectives reference maintaining visitation 'as prescribed by the Department of Corrections,' but no inspection reports were found published on co.marquette.mi.us.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Marquette 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