The Detention Center
Wayne County Criminal Justice Center (CJC), housing the Wayne County Adult Detention Facility
- Operated byWayne County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address5301 Russell Street, Detroit, MI 48211
- Facility descriptionThe Sheriff's Office describes the CJC as designed to 'centralize Wayne County's criminal justice operations,' housing a criminal courthouse, adult and juvenile detention facilities, over 1,400 office spaces for criminal-justice departments and law enforcement, and a central utility plant, and states it 'replaces several outdated structures'
- Construction historyThe Sheriff's Office's own site does not name or describe the earlier halted 'Mound Road' jail-construction project, its cost overrun, or the William Dickerson Detention Facility name; this office could not open a source in this session (Wikipedia and several news-outlet URLs were blocked, 404'd, or required approvals not obtained) confirming those widely-reported historical details, so no dates, dollar figures, or the 'Dickerson' name are asserted here — see notes for what was tried
- BudgetThe FY2025/FY2026 Comprehensive Executive Budget / Appropriation Ordinance (opened and read) shows 'Sheriff - County Jails' with total sources of $147,286,142, plus separate line items for Sheriff Administration ($9,126,700), Sheriff - Court Services ($28,876,365), and Sheriff Non-Jail Services ($8,381,844)
Source: Wayne County Sheriff's Office official site · checked 2026-09-19
Transparency rating
8/10Open- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✓Beds and daily population
- ✓What it costs taxpayers
- ✗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
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 Raphael "Ray" Washington
- Runs the jailThe Wayne County Sheriff's Office operates the county's jail system, currently the Wayne County Criminal Justice Center / Wayne County Adult Detention Facility at 5301 Russell Street, Detroit, MI 48211
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term, MCL 51.70
- Statutory basisMCL 51.75 gives the sheriff custody of the county jail
- BackgroundPer his official bio page, Washington served 24 years as a Detroit Police Officer, joined the Wayne County Sheriff's Office in 2009, and rose to the executive level; the page does not state whether he was first elected or appointed, or his term dates
Still needed
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Wayne County Sheriff's Office official site (reached via redirect from waynecountymi.gov/Government/Elected-Officials/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.
Wayne 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 boardWayne County Commission — 15 commissioners representing 15 districts, elected every two years; meets first and third Thursday of the month at the Guardian Building, 500 Griswold, Detroit →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- Wayne County's official domain (waynecountymi.gov) redirects its 'Sheriff' elected-official page to https://www.sheriffconnect.com/, which functions as the Wayne County Sheriff's Office's own public website (branded 'Wayne County Sheriff's Office' throughout, official contact numbers, waynecountymi.gov staff emails); it was treated as the office's own site for these checks.
- The current facility is called the 'Wayne County Criminal Justice Center' / 'Wayne County Adult Detention Facility' on the office's own site as of this research; the name 'William Dickerson Detention Facility,' sometimes used publicly for a Wayne County jail facility, does not appear anywhere on the Sheriff's Office's own site as fetched.
- Jail Dashboard (https://www.sheriffconnect.com/dashboard/) is a public transparency tool, funded via grants from the Hudson-Webber Foundation and Detroit Wayne Integrated Health Network, showing daily jail and tether population counts, demographics, length-of-stay, and housing-facility availability — scored as satisfying 'capacity' since it discloses real-time housing/population data, though it is not a single static bed-count figure.
- Commissary contract: the site names the vendor as 'Continental Distributors dba Canteen Correctional Services,' scored as satisfying 'contracts.'
- Fees: an 8% credit-card bond-processing fee (paid to Government Payment Services, Inc.) and a $10 proof-of-incarceration fee are disclosed on the office's own site.
- PREA: the office states it publishes a 'Zero Tolerance PREA Policy' document and quarterly PREA reports, linked from https://www.sheriffconnect.com/prison-rape-elimination-act-prea/.
- What was tried and failed for the construction/cost-overrun history and for deaths/inspections data: en.wikipedia.org (fetch blocked as 'cache-only' in this environment), wikiwand.com (required a provenance approval that was not granted in time), freep.com (site blocked), bridgemi.com and detroitnews.com and clickondetroit.com specific guessed URLs (404 or robots-disallowed), and the WebSearch tool (session search budget was exhausted before Wayne County research began, after being used across earlier counties in this session).
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Wayne 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