The Detention Center
Not found — no county jail identified
- Operated byNot found
- Where prisoners goNot found. Wayne County's published FY2026 budget (Law Enforcement fund) has no detention/housing line item, consistent with the county operating no jail, but the document naming which facility holds Wayne County's prisoners was not located
- What was triedChecked waynecountyutah.gov home page, /documents (all posted categories including Sheriff, Budgets, Commissioner's), the FY2026 transparency budget PDF (no jail/detention/prisoner-board line items), and the 2025 Sheriff Policy 420 PDF (no text layer/OCR not attempted). No dedicated Sheriff's Office website could be found (waynecountysheriff.org returns 404).
Source: Wayne County, Utah — Documents (Sheriff category) · checked 2026-08-24
Transparency rating
0/10Closed- ✗The jail is named — not published
- ✗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 — not published
- ✗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 Micah Gulley
- Runs a jailNo — Wayne County does not appear to operate a county jail; its FY2026 Law Enforcement budget (fund 10-4210) contains no detention/jail line item
- How the office is filledElected; Utah Code Title 17 Chapter 22 places the sheriff in charge of any county jail
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Utah Sheriffs Association — Sheriff Directory · checked 2026-08-24
The Judges
Utah's District Court and Justice Court judges are state judicial officers, not county officials. District Court judges are appointed by the Governor through a nominating commission, then face retention election; Justice Court judges are appointed locally and also face retention. Wayne County's own site does not publish a Justice Court judges page.
Sixth District Court — Judges serving Wayne County (shared multi-county district)
- Not individually confirmed for Wayne County on the pages reviewed
- The county's bond schedule
- Share of the jail population held pretrial
- Median time from booking to first appearance
Source: the state judiciary · checked 2026-08-24
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 boardBoard of County Commissioners →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- Wayne County is one of the counties (with Morgan and Piute) identified by the 2008 Utah legislative audit as having no county jail; this is consistent with the absence of any detention line item in the county's own FY2026 budget, but the county's own site does not state where its prisoners are held.
- This is treated as a real finding per the research brief, not a gap: no jail exists to audit against most of the ten transparency checks.
- Wayne County Board of Commissioners — three commissioners; the county's own 2025 and 2026 Commission Assignments documents identify them only as "Commissioner Brian," "Commissioner Cook," and "Commissioner Blackburn" (full names not given in the source). County Clerk/Auditor: Felicia Snow.
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 2026-08-24 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered