Marathon County, Wisconsin — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

Marathon County Jail

Operated byMarathon County Sheriff's Office, Corrections Division
Jail address500 Forest Street, Wausau, WI 54403
Beds279 beds (facility opened 1988; expanded by 120 beds in 2000, per aggregator citing county figures)
Additional facilityCounty also operates a Juvenile Detention Facility at 7015 Packer Drive, Wausau, WI 54401, capacity up to 20 juveniles ages 10-17

Source: Marathon County, WI - Corrections Division / Jail · checked 2026-09-19

Transparency rating

4/10Partial

✗The jail is named — not published
✓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 — not published

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Marathon County publishes about a jail its taxpayers own, checked 2026-09-19. Nothing here says the jail is run well or badly. Every mark moves the moment the county posts the document.

The Building

You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.

Year built1988 (per county jail page)
Original costNot found
Paid for byNot found
Beds279 (after a 120-bed 2000 expansion)

Since then

2000 expansion added 120 beds, per county jail page

The Sheriff

Sheriff Chad Billeb

Runs the jailMarathon County Sheriff's Office Corrections Division operates the Marathon County Jail
How the office is filledElected, four-year term, Wis. Stat. ch. 59
Statutory basisWis. Stat. ch. 59 (county sheriff)

Still needed

Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail

Source: Wausau Pilot & Review · 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.

Marathon 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 boardMarathon County Board of Supervisors (38 members)
Where the jail money is decidedNot found

Notes on the record

The Marathon County Sheriff's Office main landing page and several sub-pages (main sheriff's office page, administration division page, county government page, staff directory) returned 403 errors on repeated fetch attempts, preventing direct confirmation of the sheriff's name from the county's own site; the name Chad Billeb is corroborated by multiple 2023-2026 news sources (swearing-in Jan. 2023; still referenced as sheriff in Wausau Pilot & Review, Nov. 2025 and Feb. 2026 articles, and an ACRU award article dated May 2026), but audit 'named' is marked 'no' per the rule that only the office's own site counts.
The Marathon County Sheriff's Office links to a commercial roster portal (Police to Citizen) via its own site — counted yes since the link is hosted/published from the county's own domain.
County operates a separate Juvenile Detention Facility distinct from the adult jail.
State inspection/oversight: Wisconsin county jails, including Marathon County Jail, fall under state jail standards administered by the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, Division of Community Corrections, under Wis. Admin. Code DOC 350; this was not independently confirmed on the county's own site during this research pass.

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Marathon 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