The Detention Center
Washtenaw County Jail
- Operated byWashtenaw County Sheriff's Office
- Jail addressNot found — the county's contact-visitation and corrections pages name the facility ('Washtenaw County Jail') but a full street address was not located on an opened county page
- BedsNot found
- Bond processBonding-information page states that for a 10% bond, the court retains 10% of the posted amount, released to the bonder at case completion or earlier by judge's order
- ProgramsCorrections division lists Community Corrections (State PA 511 diversion programs), Court Security Services (~40 officers securing seven court facilities), and Correctional Services programming aimed at reducing recidivism
Source: Washtenaw County Corrections page · checked 2026-09-19
Transparency rating
2/10Closed- ✓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 — 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
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 Alyshia M. Dyer
- Runs the jailThe Washtenaw County Sheriff's Office Corrections division operates the Washtenaw County Jail
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term, MCL 51.70
- Statutory basisMCL 51.75 gives the 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: Washtenaw 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.
Washtenaw 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 boardWashtenaw County Board of Commissioners →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- The county's 'Incarcerated Individual Information' hub page (https://www.washtenaw.org/incarcerated-individual-information) links to contact visitation, attorney visits, bonding, mail, money & accounting, phone calls, property release, video visitation, and a 'Jail COVID-19 Summary' dashboard hosted on Smartsheet (https://app.smartsheet.com/b/publish?EQBCT=8cfb7ced6f97412485b26ea65b48e5e2) — none of these constitute a public inmate roster, a capacity figure, a budget, PREA disclosure, inspection records, or a contracts page, so those checks were scored no.
- What was tried: attempts to fetch a dedicated county budget-planning page and a Sheriff's Office address page either 404'd or did not contain the sought detail; a specific jail street address could not be confirmed from an opened page in this session.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Washtenaw 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