St. Clair County, Michigan — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

St. Clair County Jail

Operated bySt. Clair County Sheriff's Office
Jail address1170 Michigan Rd., Port Huron, MI 48060-4658
BedsNot found
Services listedThe county's jail information page (legacy site) describes visitation procedures, bonding information, commissary access, and medical treatment details

Source: St. Clair County jail information page · checked 2026-09-19

Transparency rating

3/10Closed

✓The jail is named
✓Who is in custody
✗Beds and daily population — not published
✗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 — not published

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what St. Clair 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 builtNot found
Original costNot found
Paid for byNot found
BedsNot found

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Tim Donnellon

Runs the jailThe St. Clair County Sheriff's Office operates the St. Clair County Jail at 1170 Michigan Rd., Port Huron, MI
How the office is filledElected, four-year term, MCL 51.70
Statutory basisMCL 51.75 gives the 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: St. Clair County official site · 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.

St. Clair 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 boardSt. Clair County Board of Commissioners →
Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →

Notes on the record

The county's current site (stclaircounty.org) and a legacy site (legacy.stclaircounty.org) both host sheriff/jail pages; the sheriff's name was confirmed on the current-site directory page, not on the legacy jail page.
A separate, unrelated commercial-looking domain (stclairsheriff.org) returned content for a St. Clair County, Alabama sheriff and was NOT used as a source for this Michigan entry.

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in St. Clair 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