The Detention Center
Waukesha County Jail
- Operated byWaukesha County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address515 W Moreland Blvd, Waukesha, WI 53188
- Beds481-bed maximum-security facility, direct and remote supervision housing pods
- ProgramsAdult education/GED, career and job-skills training, addiction education and counseling, religious services
Source: Waukesha County · checked 2026-09-19
Transparency rating
7/10Open- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✓Beds and daily population
- ✓What it costs taxpayers
- ✓Deaths in custody
- ✓PREA audits
- ✗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 builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds481
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Eric Severson
- Runs the jailThe Waukesha County Sheriff's Office Jail Division operates the county jail; office serves nearly 410,769 residents over 576 square miles
- How the office is filledElected, four-year term, Wis. Stat. ch. 59
- Statutory basisWis. Stat. ch. 59 (county sheriff has custody of the county jail)
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Waukesha County · 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.
Waukesha 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 boardNot found
- Where the jail money is decidedNot found
Notes on the record
- The 2024 adopted county budget document (Justice & Public Safety section) shows Sheriff's Office expenditures of approximately $50.3 million for 2024, up from about $49.0 million actual in 2023, with revenues around $17.8 million and a county tax levy of about $32.4 million.
- The Sheriff's Reports page publishes in-custody/law-enforcement-contact death investigation summaries together with Milwaukee County District Attorney response letters, spanning cases from 2017 through 2026.
- A PREA page publishes a 2025 PREA Annual Report and a 2024 PREA Audit Report and a zero-tolerance policy statement.
- No inspection reports, jail-specific fee schedule, or vendor/medical contract disclosures were found on the site.
- State inspection/oversight: Wisconsin DOC Division of Community Corrections inspects county jails under Wis. Admin. Code DOC 350; applicability to Waukesha County jail not independently confirmed on the sheriff's site.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Waukesha 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