The Detention Center
Dane County Jail
- Operated byDane County Sheriff's Office
- Jail addresses (current, pre-consolidation)City-County Building, 210 Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., Madison, WI 53703 (maximum security, 6th/7th floors) and Public Safety Building, 115 W. Doty St., Madison, WI 53703 (medium security, includes Central Booking); Ferris Center minimum-security facility decommissioned in 2024
- Jail Consolidation ProjectUnder construction since a March 13, 2024 groundbreaking (contractor Miron Construction); adds a South Tower (targeted completion end of 2026) and renovates the Public Safety Building (starting 2027), with full project completion expected near end of 2027; replaces the City-County Building jail and does not include Huber housing
- Planned bedsConsolidated facility will reduce maximum bed count from 1,013 to 825, including 62 dedicated medical beds and 57 dedicated mental health beds
Source: Dane County Sheriff's Office - Jail Consolidation · checked 2026-09-19
Transparency rating
6/10Partial- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✓Beds and daily population
- ✓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
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot found for the current City-County Building/Public Safety Building jail; new consolidated South Tower under construction, groundbreaking March 13, 2024
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- BedsCurrent maximum 1,013; consolidated facility (targeted end of 2027) planned for 825, including 62 medical and 57 mental-health beds
Since then
- Jail Consolidation Project: South Tower addition (targeted completion end of 2026), Public Safety Building renovation (starting 2027), full completion expected near end of 2027; Ferris Center minimum-security facility decommissioned in 2024
The Sheriff
Sheriff Kalvin D. Barrett
- Runs the jailDane County Sheriff's Office operates the Dane County Jail, currently split across the City-County Building and the Public Safety Building in Madison
- 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: Dane County Sheriff's Office · 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.
Dane 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 boardDane County Board of Supervisors →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- Dane County currently operates jail beds across two downtown Madison buildings (City-County Building and Public Safety Building) while a multi-year Jail Consolidation Project is under construction to replace the City-County Building jail; Huber/work-release now runs through a jail diversion program rather than a separate Huber facility.
- 2025 detailed Sheriff's Office budget request (admin.danecounty.gov) shows Security Services Division total expenditures of $55.3 million ($40.1M personnel, $13.3M contractual services, $2.0M operating), $3.6 million in revenues, and net GPR support required of $51.7 million, with 276 FTE.
- Bail Information page discloses a 5% non-refundable GovPayNet fee on bail posted online or by phone, plus an automatic credit-card transaction fee.
- No published PREA policy/report, deaths-in-custody data, inspection reports, or jail contracts were found on danesheriff.com or danecounty.gov in this pass.
- What was tried: searched danesheriff.com and danecounty.gov for PREA policy/report and deaths-in-custody or inspection records — none opened; a Digital-Dashboard link referenced in search results returned a 404.
- State inspection/oversight: Wisconsin DOC Division of Community Corrections inspects county jails under Wis. Admin. Code DOC 350; not independently confirmed to apply to Dane County on the county's own site.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Dane 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