Barry County Wants a New Jail. Its Own Study Raises Questions It Can’t Answer.

Barry County’s Board of Commissioners just moved a proposed law enforcement facility into preconstruction. Its own consultants were paid to study whether the county even needs one this big. So I read the study. Then I read the receipts.

Barry County wants taxpayers to prepare for another multimillion-dollar law enforcement facility. So I went looking for the study that supposedly tells us why we need it. Boy, oh, boy, this was fun.

Because before Barry County asks residents for one single additional dollar, somebody needs to ask a much more uncomfortable question: what has Barry County done to fix the system filling the jail in the first place?

The Vote Nobody Will See on a Ballot, But Everybody Will Pay For

The commissioners themselves are not on the November 2026 ballot. Barry County’s current ballot material shows races like the 5th Circuit Court seat and local municipal and school contests, not the eight seats on the Board of Commissioners. But look at what the Board just did with the seats they already hold.

On September 8, 2026, the Board approved the contract with Granger Construction to move the proposed law enforcement facility into preconstruction. The immediate county exposure is $96,259. That phase of work takes the project through the point where the county decides whether to pursue a millage. The vote was unanimous. Commissioner Hatfield made the motion. Commissioner Teunessen supported it. Commissioners Callton, Campbell, Getty, Smelker, Teunessen, Bassett, Hatfield, and Jackson all voted yes.

The scale under discussion is substantial. County Administrator Eric Zuzga described the working project budget as roughly $30 million in construction plus $5 million in soft costs, a total near $35 million. Commissioner Teunessen said earlier versions of the project had run $48 million to $52 million, and described getting the number down toward $30 million as making the project more manageable to bring to taxpayers.

And here is the part that changes the political picture. County officials acknowledged at the September 8 meeting that it ends up being a voter decision.

So while the commissioners are not personally on the ballot this November, a jail funding question could eventually reach voters if the county pursues the millage route it has been discussing; that does not establish a November 2026 jail vote. The county has not yet formally committed to that route. The $96,259 preconstruction phase gets Barry County to the point where that financing decision gets made, not past it.

What Barry County Says It Needs, in Its Own Numbers

Zuzga also put a number on what the current system already costs. The jail and Sheriff’s Department alone consume roughly $7.5 million of the county’s roughly $20-million-plus general fund budget, with the courts representing another major expenditure.

That gives us a more documentable accountability question than simply Barry wants a bigger jail. Before asking taxpayers to finance $30 million to $35 million more in justice system infrastructure, what has the Board done to measure whether the existing system is producing good outcomes?

Those are two separate questions, and Clutch Justice wants to be fair about the first one. The physical jail genuinely may be old, unsafe to operate, expensive to maintain, or out of compliance with modern standards. Barry County has said exactly that. Its 2025 state funding request described facilities more than fifty years old and unsuited to modern corrections. That deserves to be represented accurately.

But a deteriorating building establishes a need to fix a building. It does not, by itself, establish a need for more incarceration capacity, whatever bed count gets proposed.

The Study Behind the Number

Barry County hired Abonmarche Byce, approved by the Board on February 11, 2025, for up to $42,000 specifically to determine jail needs through 2045. The county posted the resulting master plan materials on its own website, including the executive summary and, most usefully, Appendix B: Historical Data, Analytics, Projection Modeling, Bed Recommendations and Comparative Counties Evaluation. That is the document that produced the 120-bed figure.

The post-charrette materials laid out four alternatives.

The consultants describe the 120-bed option as the one consistent with bed recommendations, offering the broadest classification flexibility and covering the largest share of projected peak demand. The smaller options are repeatedly described as falling short of that same benchmark. That means 120 is not simply one architectural possibility among several. It is the planning benchmark the cheaper options are being judged against.

Do the Math: 120 Isn’t Replacing 97

The existing jail is rated at roughly 97 to 98 beds. Barry County’s own historical presentations give these average daily populations: 66 in 2016, 90 in 2017, 97 in 2018, 82 in 2019, and 78 in 2020. So 120 beds is not simply replacing 97 beds. It is roughly a 22 to 24 percent increase in rated capacity, depending on whether the baseline is 98 or 97 beds.

There is an important conceptual wrinkle here worth naming. Barry County’s own 2015 facilities study said a 97-bed jail should not routinely hold 97 people. Smaller jails need empty beds for classification and population swings, and that study described a reasonable operational full count of 83 to 85 people. That is legitimate corrections planning, and Clutch Justice is not disputing it.

But it means readers need to hold six different numbers apart at once: physical beds, rated capacity, operational capacity, projected average daily population, peak population, and classification reserve. Collapse those into one number and we need 120 beds starts to sound like we expect 120 people in custody, when the underlying calculation is considerably more conditional than that.

The Part of the Study Nobody Is Talking About

Here is the bigger problem. Barry County’s own consultant was explicitly required to study ways of reducing demand for jail beds, not just to design more of them.

The scope Barry County approved required Abonmarche Byce to investigate and evaluate alternative programs not currently being utilized by the county. It also called for a visioning session to explore alternatives, and an assessment of community partnership opportunities for treatment programs supporting existing and anticipated county programs. The analysis was expressly supposed to cover incarceration and jail operations, Community Corrections, and treatment programs.

That is the pressure point. Before accepting a 120-bed recommendation, Clutch Justice wants to know exactly what Abonmarche concluded about those alternatives. What diversion programs did the consultants model? What pretrial reforms? What changes in bond practices? What mental health diversion, and what substance use treatment capacity? What Community Corrections expansion? What effect did each of those alternatives have on projected average daily population? And, critically, did the consultants model any scenario in which Barry County changed the behavior of the institutions that put people into jail in the first place?

Because if they did not, the projection is not really Barry County needs 120 beds. It is closer to if Barry County keeps operating its criminal legal system according to the assumptions built into this model, this is how many beds the model says Barry County should build. Those are radically different propositions, and only one of them has been presented to the public.

Barry County Already Knows Population Is a Policy Choice

This is not theoretical. When Barry County approached overcrowding in 2018, Sheriff Dar Leaf publicly discussed several mechanisms for reducing the jail population: changing bond conditions, releasing low-level offenders near the completion of their sentences, transferring people to other facilities, and moving prison-bound people out of the county jail.

In other words, Barry County itself has already acknowledged that jail population is not some naturally occurring number. Courts, prosecutors, corrections, and law enforcement decisions affect it. Which makes the composition of the 2025 stakeholder committee extremely relevant to how the current recommendation got built.

Who Was in the Room

The county’s own committee roster includes Judge Michael Schipper, Court Administrator Ines Straube, Prosecutor Julie Nakfoor Pratt, Sheriff Dar Leaf, six additional Sheriff’s Department representatives, two police chiefs, commissioners, public defense, mental health representation, county administration, and others. Only two seats are identified as citizen at large.

Asking the Hoarder If the House Needs More Storage

Two of those committee seats deserve more scrutiny than a name in a roster, because both come with a documented record that predates this project by years.

None of this means the recommendation these two officials helped shape is automatically wrong. It means the people asking Barry County to trust a 120-bed projection are, in significant part, the same people whose own documented practices help decide how many people end up needing a bed. Clutch Justice’s original reporting on the county’s plea practices is the place to start if you want the underlying record instead of taking this paragraph’s word for it.

The Alternatives Story Is Bigger Than a Missing Model

Barry County did not simply overlook Community Corrections. In October 2023, its Community Corrections Advisory Board recommended rejecting the state’s FY2024 proposal. By February 2025, county officials said they had gone two years without PA 511 funding, did not intend to apply in the near future, and had found no other county department willing to manage it. The county then dissolved the advisory board.

That belongs in the same conversation as a bigger jail. Before taxpayers finance additional incarceration capacity, they deserve to know why Barry County walked away from a state-funded structure built to examine alternatives, track outcomes, and reduce prison commitments.

Michigan’s Office of Community Corrections describes a system of evidence-based services, local planning, data analysis, and community alternatives that protects public safety while reducing incarceration. Leaving PA 511 does not by itself establish a violation of the law, and it does not mean every local treatment program disappeared. It does make the replacement funding, oversight, and outcomes a public accountability question.

Michigan Offered $154,210. Barry County Chose Local Replacement Costs.

The state did not simply refuse to fund Barry County. MDOC recommended a conditional FY2024 award of $154,210. Barry County’s paperwork estimated that rejecting it would require $130,950 in local replacement funding, plus future wage and inflation increases: $100,950 from specified general-fund accounts and $30,000 from another fund. The proposal included moving Trial Court Criminal/Civil and Family Division funding toward problem-solving courts. Read the October 17, 2023 packet, PDF pages 66–71. These are different budget figures, not a dollar-for-dollar accounting of identical services.

Barry County wanted funding for cognitive programs, Seeking Safety, relapse prevention, and drug testing. Its proposal set an overall prison-commitment-rate objective of 17.7 percent or below. MDOC conditionally supported the plan with modifications.

What the State Wanted

• Supporting data. Barry County proposed serving people originally charged with felonies who pleaded down to misdemeanors as part of treatment-court agreements. MDOC required analysis supporting that proposed prison-diversion population.
• A revised budget and enrollment projections. The county had to show how funding would be allocated among programs and revise enrollment information if the changes affected its projections.
• Defined eligibility. Funding came with approved target populations and eligibility criteria.
• Reimbursable group requirements. Cognitive groups generally needed at least three enrolled participants to qualify for group reimbursement unless an override or waiver was obtained.

What the County Said Was Wrong

The county’s explanation was operational: it said MDOC’s shift from an enforcement model to a coaching model did not align with Community Corrections prerequisites, potentially reducing enrollments and reimbursement. That is the explanation residents should ask officials to quantify. Which requirements created the problem? How many participants would have been affected? What did the county try before rejecting the proposal? What did local replacement funding actually purchase?

The same packet records continuing OMNI/BIR data-entry and export problems and concerns about the accuracy of felony-disposition data. Michigan was attaching money to documentation, eligibility, and outcomes while Barry County was acknowledging data-quality problems. That is a documented collision. It does not establish that avoiding scrutiny was any particular official’s motive.

The Timeline: Funding Out, Advisory Board Gone, Jail Planning Forward

1. 2022 / FY2023: The research record identifies a $156,558 Community Corrections grant and Smelker’s motion recommending its approval. The underlying grant and motion should be read alongside the later reversal in policy.
2. October 10, 2023: A special/emergency CCAB meeting considered the FY2024 proposal and chose to recommend declining it, according to the county’s subsequent agenda request.
3. October 17, 2023: Tammi Price presented the rejection request and $130,950 local replacement calculation to the Committee of the Whole. The request explicitly left the final decision to the Board of Commissioners. October 17 packet.
4. October 24, 2023: The proposed rejection moved into the Board of Commissioners’ materials. October 24 packet.
5. February 4, 2025: Bassett moved and Smelker supported recommending dissolution of the CCAB; the Committee of the Whole minutes record all ayes. Those minutes appear in the February 18 packet.
6. February 11, 2025: The Board approved dissolution and the $42,000 jail study through the same consent vote. Teunessen moved approval, Smelker supported it, and all seven commissioners present voted yes; Jackson was absent. The minutes are included in the February 25 packet. The county’s facility-project history also dates approval of the Abonmarche Byce study to February 11.
7. 2025–2026: Facility planning developed the 120-bed benchmark and advanced toward the September 8, 2026 preconstruction decision described above.

Put those choices next to each other. Barry County eliminated its Community Corrections advisory structure while moving forward with a study of future jail needs. Taxpayers deserve to see what replaced the board’s work, who became responsible for measuring alternatives, and how those findings reached the jail consultants.

Who Was on the Community Corrections Board?

The supplied 2023 roster identifies Sheriff Dar Leaf; Hastings Police Chief Dale Boulter; Judges Vicky Alspaugh, Michael Schipper, and William Doherty; Prosecutor Julie Nakfoor-Pratt; defense attorney and CCAB chair David Tripp; Commissioner Jon Smelker; Christine Hiar; Karen Ferrier; Michelle Newton; Carrie Larabee; Casey Mickelson; and Amy Graham. Tammi Price administered the Community Corrections work.

Later appointment records identify Tripp and Ferrier for renewed 2024–2026 terms, with Emily Gary representing workforce investment, Greg Garn representing probation, Amanda Matthews representing a service area, and Cynthia Norton selected for the citizen-at-large seat. Those later appointments do not establish who attended the October 10 meeting. Review the November 21, 2023 appointment materials.

The research notes also identify a 2020 discussion in which officials considered a new jail while discussing whether bail reform could reduce the population to approximately 50 people. That historical comparison deserves a source-by-source review against the later model. A scenario discussed in a meeting is not a verified forecast or proof that 50 beds would safely meet today’s needs.

Test the Incarceration Hypothesis. Do Not Skip the Contrary Data.

The historical research raises an important question: was Barry County sending people to prison at unusually high rates while underusing community alternatives? The FY2020 figures identified in the research notes put the overall rate at 17.9 percent in FY2017 and 22.6 percent in FY2018, with a goal of 16 percent or less and a Group 2 Straddle Cell rate reported as 13 percentage points above the statewide rate. Those historical figures need to be checked against the underlying FY2020 assessment before being treated as a verified trend.

The later assessment adds necessary context. In the FY2024 proposal, MDOC described Barry County’s rates as comparable to or lower than statewide rates in most categories. For FY2022, the county’s overall rate was 21.6 percent against 18.4 percent statewide; its Group 2 Straddle Cell rate was 9.1 percent against 20.3 percent statewide. The same assessment noted continuing concerns about the county’s data accuracy. Read MDOC’s assessment, PDF page 70.

Those figures do not support a claim that Barry County was consistently above the state in every category. They support a demand for a reliable, multi-year comparison, with consistent denominators, offense and risk categories, comparable counties, and an explanation of the data problems.

Prison commitments and county-jail bed demand are different measures. Connecting them requires actual admissions, pretrial status, length of stay, probation dispositions, transfers, and release data. The county should also disclose treatment-court referrals, PA 511 referrals, enrollments, completions, and the number of eligible people who were never referred. Only then can residents test how much jail demand reflects population growth, how much reflects policy, and how much could change.

The Sentencing Record Belongs Beside the Bed Model

Individual appellate cases do not calculate a county’s required bed count. They do identify decisions and repeat proceedings that deserve to be measured when officials describe the system’s workload and incarceration needs.

• People v. Velasquez: The recommended minimum range was 0–6 months; the original sentence was 36–60 months. After another departure on remand, the Court of Appeals ordered resentencing before a different judge. Read the January 10, 2025 opinion.
• People v. Arizola: The guidelines recommended a minimum of 19–76 months; the original sentence was 240–480 months. The Court of Appeals vacated it because the trial court had not adequately justified the extent of the departure. Read the September 18, 2024 opinion. Clutch Justice’s subsequent reporting describes another above-guidelines sentence after remand and renewed appellate proceedings.
• People v. Lupu: On January 30, 2026, the Michigan Supreme Court remanded upward-departure and presentence-investigation-report issues for further Court of Appeals review. That order required review; it did not itself determine that the sentence was unlawful. Read Clutch Justice’s coverage and linked order.

Upward departures are not automatically unlawful. The question is whether the sentence is proportionate and adequately justified, and what happens when appellate correction requires another proceeding. Count the repeat hearings, additional detention where applicable, transportation, attorney time, court resources, and family consequences. Do not treat every return to court as unavoidable new demand.

Then ask the measurable question: how do Barry County’s sentencing, referral, and incarceration practices compare with the community-based model the state was trying to fund?

Barry County Already Knows Stability Matters

Barry County’s own FY2024 proposal identified substance abuse at 87 percent, the assessment category labeled “criminal personality” at 64 percent, and residential instability and social isolation at 55 percent each among the identified moderate-to-high needs of felony probationers. These are assessment categories for the described population, not percentages of all Barry County residents.

The proposed service network included housing and basic needs, employment and job placement, mental-health and substance-use treatment, transportation, parenting and family support, education, and health care. The county knows these things matter. It put them in its own paperwork.

So here is the missing outcome layer: what happens when the justice system itself unnecessarily destabilizes the things its programs are supposed to protect?

If someone enters the system employed and housed, then loses work, housing, financial stability, treatment access, or family connection during detention and repeated court involvement, that belongs in the outcome data. Sometimes restrictions and separation are necessary for public safety. The county should still be able to explain whether the harm was necessary and proportionate, and what happened afterward.

Report those outcomes at entry, exit, and defined follow-up points, using aggregate data that protects personal privacy. Compare similar cases and account for differences in risk and needs. A before-and-after change alone does not prove what caused it; refusing to track the change guarantees the county cannot answer the question.

Barry County, Is Justice in the Room With Us Right Now?

A courthouse can open on time, call its cases, enter its orders, and send people into custody while failing the people who depend on it to deliver justice. Keeping the docket moving tells us that a courthouse is operational. It tells us very little about whether its decisions are fair, whether its sentences withstand review, or whether the people moving through it are being heard.

That is what makes the record here so troubling. The sentencing cases discussed above required appellate intervention. Clutch Justice’s reporting has raised concerns about plea pressure. The county’s own Community Corrections paperwork recognizes housing, employment, treatment, family support, and social connection as factors that matter to people’s success. Put those records together, and residents have every reason to ask whether the county is examining the damage its own practices can cause—or simply processing the next person.

When someone is pressured through a plea, subjected to a sentence that cannot survive appellate review, or forced to spend years seeking a correction, the consequences reach beyond a case number. People can lose work, housing, family time, and the resources they need to recover. From the receiving end, a system that keeps moving while those consequences go unanswered can feel like a railroad. Calling the courthouse fully operational does not answer that criticism.

And Barry County cannot plausibly claim institutional ignorance about the importance of stability. Its own proposal identifies the needs. Its own proposed service network addresses them. That establishes that the county understands these protective factors; it does not establish that every official intended to undermine them. But it absolutely gives the public a standard against which to judge their leadership: what are you doing when the institutions you lead put those same protections at risk?

Then comes the funding decision. MDOC offered conditional support for a $154,210 award and required supporting data for a proposed diversion population, clearer budgeting, and compliance with program requirements. Barry County’s paperwork acknowledged data problems. Its advisory board recommended rejecting the proposal, the county moved to local replacement funding, and the advisory board was later dissolved. Money was available to support alternatives, subject to conditions the county chose not to accept.

The record does not establish that officials rejected the award to hide evidence of harm. The missing population analysis would not, by itself, have proved that the county was railroading people, either. The county cited enrollment and reimbursement concerns. But that explanation leaves a serious leadership question unanswered: why was walking away preferable to resolving the data problems, working through the requirements, and demonstrating what these programs could accomplish? Where is the equally rigorous public accounting of the locally funded approach that followed?

In my view, that reflects poorly on the leadership responsible for these choices. Officials asking residents to trust them with more incarceration capacity should be able to show how they evaluate unnecessary incarceration, correct harmful practices, and measure whether alternatives work. Residents should not have to reconstruct that answer from years of scattered meeting packets while the next construction decision moves forward.

Holding Office Does Not Make You an Expert in the Consequences

The authority to approve a jail budget does not establish expertise in psychology, criminal justice, treatment, or the effects of incarceration. Residents should ask what relevant training decision-makers have, whose independent expertise they consult, and how current research informs their decisions. A credential alone would not settle those questions. The public needs to see competent reasoning, reliable evidence, and a willingness to correct mistakes.

Schipper’s sentencing record, as discussed above, makes that demand particularly concrete. When appellate courts require a sentence to be reconsidered because its departure was inadequately justified, county residents deserve to know what changes in subsequent practice. The question is whether the court applies current law and sentencing guidance, considers relevant evidence, and responds to appellate correction. Judicial discretion should come with a defensible explanation of how it was exercised.

The same standard belongs in the jail debate. What evidence supports the proposed capacity? Who evaluated the alternatives? What independent review tested the assumptions? How are the county’s acknowledged data problems being corrected? Officials should be able to answer those questions before asking taxpayers to finance decisions with consequences lasting decades.

The potential cost of getting this wrong is a cycle of instability that can deepen poverty. Unnecessary detention can interrupt employment; lost income can put housing at risk; transportation costs, debt, and disrupted care can make recovery harder. Those consequences can reach children and other family members who were never accused of anything. Their extent and causes in Barry County need to be measured, rather than assumed or ignored. The county’s own recognition that housing, employment, and family stability matter makes that measurement an obligation of responsible leadership.

In my view, leaders who cannot demonstrate an informed approach to those consequences have not earned the public’s trust for expanding the system. Bring independent expertise into the room. Include people who have lived through the process. Publish the evidence, assess the outcomes, and change course when the results demand it. Holding office gives someone power to decide. It does not make an unsupported decision sound.

At This Point, Accountability Means Answering for the Choices

The record described here contains repeated reasons for Barry County’s leadership to examine how its justice system operates: appellate decisions requiring correction, concerns raised through public reporting, acknowledged data problems, and the county’s own recognition that stability and community support matter. These concerns reach across the courts, county funding decisions, and Community Corrections. Officials should have to answer for the warnings that reached their offices and what they did with them.

Once an official receives notice of a specific problem, the accountability question becomes concrete: what did you investigate, what did you correct, and what did you do to prevent it from happening again? A referral to another office should come with follow-through. An assurance that procedures were followed should come with evidence that those procedures protected the person affected. The public deserves an answer that reaches the harm itself.

In my view, there is no excuse for treating documented, avoidable harm as an acceptable cost of keeping this system moving. When leaders know a practice is causing unnecessary harm and have the authority to address it, continuing that practice is a choice. When they can demand reliable data, examine alternatives, or insist on corrective action and decline to do so, those are choices too. Each official should be judged against the notice they received, the authority they held, and the action they took.

People who describe being railroaded deserve to have their records examined and their concerns answered. They should not have to keep reliving the damage while officials congratulate themselves for operating a courthouse. Justice requires a willingness to correct the institution when it fails the person. At this point, Barry County’s leadership should be showing the public what it has changed—and answering for what it has chosen to leave in place.

A $16.2 Million Difference Needs an Explanation

Remember what county officials are saying now. At the September 8, 2026 meeting, Zuzga described the working project budget as approximately $30 million in construction plus $5 million in soft costs, roughly $35 million total.

But the December 2025 consultant document put the 120-bed option’s mean probable cost at $51.2 million, with a range reaching $55.04 million. Even the smallest, 60-bed alternative had a mean probable cost of $42.42 million.

What disappeared between the consultant’s $51.2 million concept and the county’s current $30 million to $35 million narrative? That is not rounding. That is potentially $16.2 million of difference between the consultant’s own mean estimate and the current working budget.

There are legitimate explanations. The county may have reduced scope, reused part of the existing facility, changed the design, changed the bed count, or separated project components into different funding phases. The September 2026 discussion specifically raised reusing existing jail square footage to save money. Fine.

Barry County Has Done This Before

Barry tried this in 2020. That proposal began at 110 inmates and was designed to expand all the way to 166 beds. The county told voters at the time that the design assumed population growth and incarceration rates would remain similar to recent trends.

Now the 2025 consultants are recommending 120. That gives us enough material to reconstruct roughly a decade of Barry County jail forecasting: the 2015 facilities study, the 2020 millage proposal, the jail’s actual recorded populations in the years that followed, the 2025 Abonmarche projection, and the 2026 Granger project now moving through preconstruction. That timeline lets the public test whether Barry County’s previous forecasts were remotely accurate, and the answer could cut either way. Clutch Justice is not assuming the result before the underlying data is public.

All the People Who Benefit From This

Before Barry County taxpayers are asked to pay for a multimillion-dollar law enforcement facility, there is another question worth asking plainly: who benefits if Barry County builds it? Because the public is not the only answer, and naming the rest concretely, who gets paid, who gets new facilities or resources, and whose institutional constraints get relieved, lets the documents do the work instead of the rhetoric.

The Consultants and Contractors

Barry County has already paid professionals to study, plan, and design its future law enforcement facility. Preconstruction comes next, followed by architectural and engineering work, construction management, contractors, subcontractors, and eventually the equipment, technology, security systems, and furniture required to operate a modern correctional facility. The Board has already approved $96,259 in preconstruction work with Granger Construction, before anyone pours the first yard of concrete.

The Sheriff’s Department

A new facility means something considerably different for the Sheriff’s Department than it does for the taxpayer writing the check: modernized working space, updated security infrastructure, better classification capability, more functional corrections space, and potentially additional operational capacity, along with relief from the real problems of operating an aging building. Those can all be legitimate institutional benefits. They are still benefits, and the Sheriff’s Department had substantial representation in the planning process that helped determine what Barry County supposedly needs.

The Courts and Prosecutor’s Office

They do not receive a construction check. Their benefit is institutional. A jail with greater functional capacity gives the criminal legal system more room to accommodate the consequences of its existing practices. That is why the jail population model matters so much. If prosecution, bond, sentencing, probation, diversion, and case processing practices contribute to jail demand, building infrastructure around that demand can relieve the pressure to change those practices instead. Before taxpayers finance the capacity, they deserve to know whether Barry County seriously modeled reducing the demand itself.

More Capacity, More Workload, More Institutional Expansion?

The institutional benefits may extend beyond the jail itself. Residents should ask whether additional detention capacity could make it easier to sustain practices that generate more court involvement, and whether that workload could later be cited to seek more staff, larger budgets, or additional judgeships. That is a possible feedback loop worth investigating before the county commits to decades of infrastructure.

More beds do not automatically create more criminal cases. A jail can hold more people because they stay longer, even if admissions do not increase. Court workload also includes matters that have nothing to do with jail capacity. Michigan’s State Court Administrative Office uses a weighted caseload method to assess judicial need; the analysis considers the work associated with different case types. A new judgeship requires separate authorization. See the 2025 Judicial Resources Recommendations methodology.

That distinction makes the question more precise: which policies generate the demand officials are asking taxpayers to accommodate? Charging decisions, diversion, case processing, and detention practices deserve examination alongside population trends and public-safety needs. If an institution’s own choices contribute to its workload, residents deserve to see those choices evaluated before that workload becomes an argument for expansion.

The Allegan Comparison: What Is Established

Allegan County provides a concrete example of judicial expansion. In December 2022, during Myrene Koch’s tenure as prosecutor, Michigan enacted legislation adding a circuit judgeship in Allegan County, as well as one in Kalamazoo County. The governor’s signing announcement identifies Senate Bill 1047. That establishes the expansion and its timing. It does not establish that Koch deliberately increased incarceration or case filings to secure another judicial seat.

There is also a documented professional connection. WHTC reported Koch’s service as an Allegan assistant prosecutor beginning in 2002, before her promotion to chief assistant and appointment as prosecutor. WBCH identified Julie Nakfoor Pratt as a former Allegan assistant prosecutor before her election in Barry County. Those histories justify examining whether particular policies or practices carried between offices. Shared employment does not, by itself, explain either official’s motives or establish a shared practice of violating constitutional rights.

Test the comparison with records: the Allegan judgeship request, supporting caseload analysis, county resolutions, and communications explaining the need; then compare charging, diversion, detention, and case-disposition trends over the relevant years. Any claim of a constitutional violation should be tied to the specific conduct and legal record. Any claim of deliberately manufacturing workload should be tied to evidence of that strategy.

Vendors

A jail is not merely a building. Correctional facilities generate ongoing contracts: food service, medical care, telecommunications, commissary, software, surveillance, security equipment, maintenance, transportation, and other professional services. Some of those contracts may simply replace services the county already pays for rather than create new spending, and that distinction matters. Taxpayers deserve to see the full economic ecosystem attached to this project, not just the number printed beside construction.

County Government

An obsolete jail creates problems county officials have to solve: maintenance headaches, classification limitations, security problems, liability exposure tied to deteriorating infrastructure, operational inefficiencies, and overcrowding concerns. A new facility can resolve many of them. Those are legitimate governmental interests. But there is a difference between fixing an obsolete building and financing enough capacity to preserve the status quo of the system operating inside it.

And Then There’s the Taxpayer

This is the person Clutch Justice is most interested in, because taxpayers do not get a construction contract, a new office, a consulting fee, or institutional breathing room. They get the bill. So before Barry County asks them to pay it, taxpayers deserve something considerably better than our jail is old, therefore this is what we need.

Show the population model. Show the assumptions behind it. Show the alternatives that were actually modeled. Show who has already been paid, and who stands to receive contracts next. Show whether reducing average length of stay changes the required bed count, whether expanded diversion changes it, and whether different pretrial practices change it. And show why spending money upstream, on the systems that decide who goes to jail and for how long, would not reduce what taxpayers have to spend downstream on the building that holds them.

Because when nearly everyone sitting around the planning table represents an institution that receives resources, capacity, or operational relief from this project, the people being asked to finance it deserve a seat at that table too. There is a second layer here worth pulling out of the records as this reporting continues: the actual names and dollars behind Abonmarche Byce, Granger, the eventual architects, subcontractors, prior jail study vendors, and whoever ultimately operates food, medical, telecom, and commissary services inside the finished building. That is what turns who benefits from a rhetorical question into a contract map.

What Taxpayers Deserve Before They’re Asked for a Dollar

Barry County residents have a narrow, useful window right now, between an approved preconstruction contract and a funding decision that has not been finalized. That is the moment to ask for the underlying jail population data, the projection model itself, what alternatives to incarceration were actually modeled, what assumptions produced the proposed bed count, and exactly what taxpayers would be buying and why.

It is also the moment to ask the Board something else entirely: what has been done to address documented accountability concerns within the courts and prosecutor’s office that help drive who ends up in that jail. Before asking taxpayers for another dollar, the county should be able to show it has examined whether the system itself is contributing unnecessarily to jail demand. Building a larger facility around a dysfunctional system does not fix the dysfunction. It gives the dysfunction more room.

Put Community Corrections Back on the Agenda

1. Revisit the funding decision. Publish the FY2024 offer, objections, alternatives considered, replacement budgets, actual spending, and outcomes since Barry County left PA 511.
2. Reconstitute the advisory board and consider reapplying. Bring courts, prosecution, defense, law enforcement, service providers, and residents back into a public process with a current criminal-justice data analysis.
3. Model an alternatives scenario. Put expanded pretrial release, diversion, treatment, and community supervision beside the 60-, 72-, and 120-bed facility scenarios, with eligibility, public-safety assumptions, costs, and expected effects on average daily population.
4. Publish the full cost and contract map. Identify consultants, construction firms, vendors, procurement relationships, contracts, and operating costs. Examine campaign contributions where relevant without treating a contribution or contract as proof of improper influence.
5. Release the missing October 10 record. Residents need the attendance and individual positions before assigning responsibility for the grant decision.

The Records Request That Gets to the Decision

Provide the minutes, attendance records, agenda, meeting packet, motions, roll-call or other vote records, audio/video recordings, notes, emails, and communications concerning the Barry County Community Corrections Advisory Board special/emergency meeting held October 10, 2023, including communications concerning MDOC’s FY2024 Community Corrections proposal.

The broader records request should cover FY2018–FY2023 PA 511 comprehensive plans; quarterly and annual performance reports; enrollment and completion data; prison-commitment rates; jail utilization and pretrial-release data; recidivism measures and definitions; correspondence with the state concerning the FY2024 award; and calculations and actual expenditures replacing state funding from FY2024 forward.

Ready to ask for answers? Download the Barry County Fix Your Sh*t commissioner letter template (PDF), add your information, and send it to your commissioner.

How Residents Can Fight Back: The Jail, the Millage, and the Courts

You do not have to wait for a campaign flyer to arrive before opposing this project. Residents can challenge spending decisions now, organize against a millage if one reaches the ballot, and demand accountability for what happens inside the courts. Each decision has a different pressure point. Use the one that can actually reach it.

1. Ask Commissioners to Vote Against the Next Commitment

Send the commissioner letter with a specific request: oppose further project commitments or a millage proposal until the county publishes its population model, alternatives analysis, full operating costs, and reconciliation of the competing estimates. Ask each commissioner for a written position. Keep a public tracker showing the question, response, and subsequent vote. “We are listening” is not a position on the next appropriation.

Use the official commissioner directory to reach your district representative and check meeting information. Ask for a public agenda discussion of restoring Community Corrections oversight and independently reviewing bed demand. A residents’ petition can demonstrate support for that request; an ordinary petition does not automatically veto a contract or force a ballot vote.

2. Organize Around the Agenda, Not Just the Outrage

Read the Committee of the Whole and Board packets before meetings. Watch for design approvals, construction-management amendments, property decisions, financing resolutions, and operating-budget commitments. Divide the work: one person tracks costs, another the population model, another Community Corrections, and another the votes. Submit written comments so your request survives the speaking-time limit, and ask the clerk how written submissions are retained.

Michigan’s Open Meetings Act generally protects attendance, public comment under the body’s established rules, and recording of covered public meetings. It does not require commissioners to answer every question during public comment. Check the posted rules, record the public meeting without disrupting it, and follow unanswered questions with a written request. These meeting-recording rights are not blanket permission to record court proceedings. Read the Michigan Attorney General’s Open Meetings Act handbook.

3. Request the Records That Can Test the Sales Pitch

Send narrow written records requests to the public body holding the records. Specify documents, dates, custodians where known, and electronic delivery. Start with the consultant’s model and assumptions, existing data exports, invoices and contracts, the October 10 CCAB meeting records, and actual replacement spending after PA 511. Ask for a fee estimate before costs exceed an amount you specify. Request existing records; a FOIA request generally does not require the county to create a new study or answer an investigative questionnaire.

Keep the request, proof of delivery, response, and fee notices together. Michigan FOIA generally requires a response within five business days of legal receipt, with a permitted ten-business-day extension; that is a response deadline, not a promise that every record will arrive within five days. If access is denied or fees are disputed, review the stated appeal rights and the available challenge procedures promptly. Michigan FOIA resources and guidance.

For court files, use the court-records process. Michigan courts are outside FOIA. Ask the court clerk for access to public case records under MCR 8.119 and for the process and fees for obtaining transcripts. Some records are restricted. Michigan Trial Court Records Management Standards.

4. If a Millage Reaches the Ballot, Organize to Defeat It

Obtain the actual proposed language and final ballot language. Identify the amount, duration, authorized uses, financing costs, and the county’s explanation of staffing and long-term operations. Publish a short, sourced comparison between what the proposal funds and the alternatives residents are asking officials to consider. People can advocate a no vote, distribute fact sheets, canvass, host discussions, and help neighbors find official voting information. Check your own ballot and voting options through Michigan’s official voter information service.

If you pool money or spend on opposition materials, use the state’s campaign-finance guidance at the outset. Michigan says a group generally must register as a committee when it receives or spends $500 or more in a calendar year to influence voters; some independent expenditures above $100 have reporting requirements even without committee registration. Ask the county clerk or Bureau of Elections which filings apply to your activity. State reporting guidance and ballot-question committee forms.

A defeated millage defeats that funding request. It does not necessarily end the project permanently. Continue watching for revised proposals, other financing arrangements, and new appropriations.

5. Build a Courtwatch Record People Can Verify

Attend proceedings that are open to the public and follow courtroom rules. Keep consistent notes: date, case number, judge, hearing type, what was requested, what was ordered, and where the written order or transcript can be obtained. Separate what you personally observed from what someone told you. Obtain permission where required before recording; do not assume a phone recording is allowed.

Look for patterns worth investigating: repeated adjournments, time in detention, access to counsel, treatment referrals, departures, and cases returning after appellate correction. Document the court’s stated reasons and the eventual outcome as well as the concern. Share public records and verified summaries with reporters or qualified advocates. Protect confidential information, children’s identities, and material under seal. A consistent record is far more useful than a collection of unsupported accusations.

Build a courtwatch team that lasts longer than one upsetting hearing. Recruit a coordinator and a small roster of observers. Create a shared calendar, arrange coverage in pairs where possible, and use the same observation form for every hearing. Train observers on courtroom rules, accurate note-taking, and the difference between a troubling interaction and evidence of misconduct. Assign someone to obtain the relevant orders or transcripts, review notes for accuracy, and publish periodic findings supported by the record. Rotate the work so the whole effort does not depend on one exhausted person.

6. Send Misconduct Complaints to the Body That Can Investigate

For alleged judicial misconduct, use the Michigan Judicial Tenure Commission’s request-for-investigation process. For alleged misconduct by a Michigan lawyer, including a prosecutor, use the Attorney Grievance Commission’s process. Identify the specific conduct, dates, case number, and supporting orders, transcripts, or correspondence. Explain what the evidence shows. A complaint should address supported conduct, not serve as a form-letter campaign against an unpopular decision. The State Bar’s disciplinary guide links both agencies and their complaint forms.

If you witness conduct by Judge Michael Schipper, Judge Vicky Alspaugh, or any other judicial officer that you believe violates judicial standards, document it and use the complaint process. Identify the words or actions, when they occurred, who was present, and the record that supports your account. Do not assume another person in the courtroom will report it. An independently supported complaint gives the reviewing body something it can evaluate; a judge’s name alone does not establish misconduct.

A misconduct complaint does not overturn a court order or replace an appeal. The JTC cannot change a judge’s decision. Someone seeking relief in their own case should promptly obtain advice about the appropriate motion or appeal and its deadlines; do not wait for a disciplinary investigation. The JTC explains the limits of its authority in its annual report. The State Bar’s legal-assistance service is one starting point for finding counsel.

7. Make Candidates Answer Specific Questions

Ask every relevant candidate the same questions and publish the answers accurately: Will you support restoring the CCAB? Publish reliable outcome data? Require an independent alternatives analysis? Disclose the full cost of the jail? For judicial candidates, ask about administration, transparency, access to justice, and their public record; do not ask for promises about the outcome of pending cases. Track which offices are actually on the ballot and revisit these questions in each election cycle.

Commissioners control important funding and policy choices, but they cannot act as an appeals court or direct a judge to change an individual ruling. Put budget demands to the Board, supported misconduct allegations to the appropriate disciplinary body, and requests for relief from a judgment through the court process.

Run for office—or help a qualified person run. If you want different decisions, help create a real choice about who makes them. Identify the office with authority over the problem, check eligibility and the next election cycle, and contact the correct filing official about petitions, declarations, deadlines, and campaign-finance requirements. Judicial offices have specific qualifications. If candidacy is not your role, recruit candidates, gather signatures where permitted, volunteer, and help residents compare their commitments. Start with Michigan’s official ballot-access guidance; do not assume a filing window is still open.

8. Write or Help Develop an Amicus Brief Where It Can Matter

An amicus curiae, or friend-of-the-court, brief can explain why a legal issue in a pending case matters beyond the parties. Residents, researchers, and organizations can help develop a carefully sourced argument, work with qualified counsel, or contribute research to an appropriate amicus effort. Identify the actual case and issue first, explain what your contribution adds, and support the argument with relevant law and properly cited sources.

Follow the receiving court’s rules for permission, timing, format, disclosures, filing, and service. In the Michigan Court of Appeals, MCR 7.212(H) generally requires a granted motion for leave, with exceptions for specified filers; other courts and stages have their own requirements. An amicus brief is not a way to insert unrelated allegations or bypass the record and evidentiary rules. Read the Court of Appeals’ filing procedures and amicus guidance, and confirm the current rule and any case-specific order before filing.

9. Give People a Way to Participate Without Carrying Everything Alone

Some residents can speak at meetings. Others can read a packet, organize public records, help someone obtain a transcript, or share an experience through the anonymous Sh*tty Barry County Stories Padlet. No log-in is required. Story submissions can identify leads; corroborating records are what allow those leads to become findings.

10. Support Independent Media. Stop Waiting for One Newspaper to Do All the Watching.

Barry County residents cannot afford to make the Hastings Banner their only source of accountability reporting. If you believe the questions that matter are not being asked, support people willing to ask them. Subscribe to independent outlets, contribute to reporting costs when you can, share documented investigations, and send reporters the records behind your concerns. Invite additional journalists to public meetings. Help build an independent public record that does not depend on one newsroom deciding a story deserves attention.

Access, advertising, campaign business, and government subscriptions are legitimate subjects for scrutiny when a newspaper covers the institutions and officials who buy its services. Those relationships can create pressures that readers deserve to understand. They do not, by themselves, prove that a newspaper has traded favorable coverage for revenue. The useful questions are specific: who paid, how much, for what, and what safeguards keep those relationships from influencing coverage?

Clutch Justice previously reported a county-funded Hastings Banner subscription tied to Judge Michael Schipper, citing a Trial Court Criminal and Civil claims entry. That article separately reported an account of Schipper saying only the Banner was permitted access after another journalist submitted a media request. It expressly identified the access statement as unconfirmed against a filed transcript. A subscription alone does not establish favoritism; the reported restriction calls for the underlying record and an explanation of the court’s actual policy.

Residents can help examine the broader financial relationships. Request county payment records showing Banner subscriptions by department, recipient, amount, and year. Review each commissioner’s campaign-finance filings for advertising purchases from the Banner and printing or signage purchases from J-Ad, then seek supporting invoices where available. Keep campaign spending separate from taxpayer spending. Publish the names, dates, amounts, and documents before drawing conclusions about the scale of the relationship or its effect on coverage.

The courtroom photography question also needs a record. Ask court administration for the applicable media policy and available requests, permissions, and orders covering the specific hearings photographed by Banner reporter Dennis Mansfield. Ask what authorization was required, what was granted, and whether the same requirements applied to other journalists. Not locating a form is not conclusive proof that no authorization existed. Give the court and reporter an opportunity to identify it.

Attendance at an open proceeding and permission to photograph or record it are separate issues. Michigan’s portable-device rule expressly preserves the separate media-coverage guidelines in Administrative Order 1989-1. Compare the actual requests and rulings under the applicable procedures. Read MCR 8.115 and the related court rules.

You do not need to prove why a newspaper has failed to answer your questions before supporting someone who will pursue them. Hold independent outlets to the same standards: sources, corrections, financial transparency, and fair representation of the evidence. Give your courtwatch team a process for sharing verified findings with multiple reporters. A community needs enough independent scrutiny that an unanswered question cannot disappear simply because one outlet moves on.

The November Election Is Another Accountability Window

The supplied election research identifies Judge Vicky Alspaugh as seeking another term in November 2026. Her role on the Community Corrections Advisory Board belongs in a review of the public record, alongside documented judicial and administrative decisions. Board membership alone does not tell us how she voted on October 10, 2023.

Michigan’s 2026 Judicial Elective Office Manual lists October 23, 2026, at 4:00 p.m. as the general-election deadline for a judicial write-in candidate’s Declaration of Intent. The ordinary non-incumbent petition deadline was April 21, 2026. A prospective candidate must meet the office’s qualifications and filing requirements; the write-in route does not put a new printed name on the ballot. Check the official judicial filing manual and state ballot-access forms.

Clutch Justice has also received accounts from families raising concerns about their experiences in Barry County’s courts. Those accounts are reporting leads to examine against records and responses, not adjudicated findings. Residents’ experiences belong in this investigation, and the story board below gives them a way to contribute.

Why This Matters Beyond Barry County

Every county weighing a new jail eventually faces the same fork Barry County is facing now: treat a facility study as a building replacement, or let it quietly become a demand-preservation study dressed up in architectural language. The difference is not in the concrete. It is in whether the underlying population model tested what happens if the system changes, or only modeled what happens if it stays exactly the same. Barry County’s consultants were paid to test the first question. The public still does not know what they found.

If Nobody Speaks Up, Who Makes It Change?

Barry County’s next decision will reach well beyond a construction site. It will shape what the county funds, what it measures, and what it is willing to keep accepting from the institutions that exercise power over people’s lives. A building can last for decades. So can the consequences of refusing to examine the system operating inside it.

The people forced to move through that system cannot simply close the meeting packet and go on with their day. They have to live with the sentence, the next hearing, the cost of getting there, and whatever happens to their work and family while the case continues. When the system causes unnecessary harm, that harm can be immense. A lost job can become lost housing. Financial strain can outlast the case. Time taken from a parent and child cannot be handed back with an amended order. The public’s accounting should include those consequences.

That is why I keep coming back to the county’s own paperwork. Barry County already identifies housing, employment, treatment, family support, and community connection as things that help people succeed. Residents should insist that the county apply those standards to its own decisions. When a practice undermines those protections, officials should have to explain why it was necessary, what alternatives they considered, and what they will change when the results show avoidable harm.

If nobody speaks up, the people making these decisions have less pressure to answer those questions. An unanswered concern can disappear between meetings. A family’s experience can remain isolated from another family’s nearly identical experience. Another budget can pass without anyone requiring an account of what the last one accomplished. We cannot expect things to get better while allowing the same decisions to proceed without sustained public scrutiny.

Stop counting on somebody else to do every part of this. If you can attend a Board of Commissioners meeting, attend. If you can read a packet, take notes in a courtroom, help develop an amicus brief, or document conduct that warrants a complaint, take responsibility for that piece. If you are qualified and willing to serve, run for office. If you are not, help someone who is. A community cannot keep asking the same few people to absorb the cost of challenging its institutions while everyone else waits for the result.

Build the courtwatch team. Put the next meeting on the calendar. Follow up on the unanswered letter. File a supported complaint when judicial conduct warrants it, including conduct by Schipper or Alspaugh. Give the work a schedule, share it, and keep doing it after the immediate outrage fades. Ending this cycle requires people who are willing to stay involved long enough to make the next decision different.

The responsibility for that harm belongs to the institutions causing it. People who have already been through the system do not owe anyone a public account of their worst experiences, and speaking up can be difficult when you still have a case, a loved one, or a livelihood at stake. That is precisely why neighbors, taxpayers, and people with more room to speak need to carry some of this work. Accountability cannot depend entirely on the people who have already paid the highest price.

Send the commissioner letter. Ask for a written response. Bring the unanswered questions to a public meeting and return to them at the next one. Read the records, share this reporting, and ask what changed because residents raised concerns. If you want to contribute your own experience, the Sh*tty Barry County Stories Padlet is anonymous and requires no log-in. One letter or one story will not fix an institution. Together, records, experiences, and persistent questions can make it harder for officials to treat the harm as invisible.

Without changes to the practices producing unnecessary harm, Barry County risks carrying that harm into a newer, more expensive building—and passing the consequences to the next person forced through its systems. Residents should not have to wait until it happens to their own family to demand better. The county should be able to show that its decisions protect public safety, respect people’s rights, and give people a meaningful chance to leave the system with their lives intact.

Barry County Voters: Stop Being Asleep at the Wheel

Pay attention to what is happening to the people around you. The decisions in these meeting packets and court orders reach your neighbors, coworkers, friends, and their children. By the time a family loses its housing, a parent loses a job, or someone spends years trying to correct an unjust outcome, the consequences have already spread well beyond the courthouse. Waiting until it happens to your own household leaves everyone else to carry the damage alone.

Money matters in that process. A person with resources has more ability to hire counsel, obtain records, pay for transportation, arrange child care, and absorb time away from work. A person without those resources can struggle to do every one of those things while also trying to keep a roof overhead. When detention or a sentence is unnecessary or excessive, the damage can fall on a household with almost no room to recover. Voters should demand data showing how the county’s decisions affect people with different financial circumstances.

We should refuse a future in which public spending creates more opportunities for people who already have money while people without resources bear the costs of avoidable incarceration. Every consultant payment and construction contract deserves scrutiny alongside the outcomes for the people the facility will hold. Who gets paid? Who loses income? Who has the means to challenge a decision? Who is left trying to survive it? Those questions belong in the same budget conversation.

Stop treating the suffering of people in jail or prison as proof that the system must have worked. Examine the record. Ask whether the outcome was lawful, necessary, and proportionate. Support the people doing that work, show up yourself where you can, and hold elected officials responsible for the decisions within their authority. Poverty should never make someone disposable, and a community should never confuse its ability to incarcerate people with its willingness to deliver justice.

Barry County: fix your sh*t. Show the public what you are doing to prevent the next avoidable harm. Show what you changed after receiving notice that something went wrong. If you had the authority to act and chose not to, answer for that choice. Before asking residents to pay for more room, answer for what happens to the people already inside.