The Detention Center
Muskegon County Jail
- Operated byMuskegon County Sheriff's Office
- Sheriff's Office address990 Terrace Street STE 450, 4th Floor, Muskegon, MI 49442
- BedsNot found on the county's own site
- Medical servicesContracted through VitalCore Health Strategies (established 2015, rebranded 2018), per the county's own Jail Medical page
Source: Muskegon County, MI - Corrections Division · checked 2026-09-19
Transparency rating
4/10Partial- ✓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
- ✗Independent inspection — not published
- ✓Who else it holds, and for how much
- ✓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
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Michael J. Poulin
- Runs the jailThe Sheriff's Office operates the Muskegon County Jail through its Corrections Division, per the county's own 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: Muskegon County, MI - Sheriff's Office About Us · 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.
Muskegon 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://co.muskegon.mi.us/1711/Board-of-Commissioners →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- The county's own 'County Inmate Lookup' link (under the Corrections Division page) leads to a third-party vendor (muskegon-911-mi.zuercherportal.com), which is not on the county's own domain, so the roster check is scored 'no' per the audit rule.
- The county's own PREA page describes a zero-tolerance policy and reporting procedures handled by the Sheriff's Office Detective Bureau, covering inmate-inmate, inmate-staff, and staff-inmate conduct; it does not mention external audits.
- The county's own Post Bond page describes cash-only, cash-or-surety, and personal-recognizance bond options and a 24/7 kiosk plus ExpressAccount.com for payments.
- No jail capacity/bed count, budget figures, deaths-in-custody data, inspection reports, or a published inmate fee schedule were found 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; no county-published inspection reports were found on co.muskegon.mi.us.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Muskegon 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