The Detention Center
Crawford County Jail
- Operated byCrawford County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address225 North Beaumont Road, Prairie du Chien, WI 53821
- New facility under constructionA new law enforcement center/jail with 42 inmate beds and a dispatch center broke ground in 2024, scheduled for completion around July 2026, per local news coverage; not confirmed on the county's own site
- Historic jailCounty's own site documents an 1867 jail ("the Dungeon," believed Wisconsin's oldest surviving jail) with ten 7x5x7-foot cells, replaced by a new jail building in 1896
Source: Crawford County WI - Jail · checked 2026-09-19
Transparency rating
4/10Partial- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✗Beds and daily population — not published
- ✓What it costs taxpayers
- ✗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 built1896 (per county's jail history page); new jail/law enforcement center under construction as of 2024-2026 was not yet confirmed complete on the county's own site
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- BedsNot found on county's own site for the current facility (a news report, not the county site, cites 42 beds planned for the new facility)
Since then
- New law enforcement center/jail broke ground 2024, scheduled completion ~July 2026 per local news (wxow.com), not confirmed via county site
The Sheriff
Sheriff Dale McCullick
- Runs the jailCrawford County Sheriff's Office operates the county jail in Prairie du Chien
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term, Wis. Stat. ch. 59
- Statutory basisWis. Stat. ch. 59 (county sheriff, custody of jail)
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Crawford County WI - Message from the Sheriff · checked 2026-09-19
The Judges
Wisconsin circuit court judges are elected on a nonpartisan ballot to six-year terms under Wis. Const. art. VII — state judicial officers, not county officials.
Crawford 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 boardCrawford County Board of Supervisors →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- Inmate list page publishes names, booking dates, and days in custody as of a snapshot time/date.
- 2025 adopted county budget includes a Sheriff Department line (100-40-52111-000, 2025 adopted total $3,630,074.00) and a County Jail revenue line (100-00-44242-000, 2025 adopted $72,000.00).
- No current bed/capacity figure, PREA policy, inspection reports, contracts, or fee schedule found on the county's own site; the 1867/1896 jail history page describes a historic, no-longer-current facility.
- What was tried: searched for a jail administrator name and current facility capacity — not found on crawfordcountywi.gov.
- State inspection/oversight: Wisconsin DOC Division of Community Corrections inspects county jails under Wis. Admin. Code DOC 350; not independently confirmed to apply to Crawford County on the county's own site.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Crawford 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