The Detention Center
Bent County Jail
- Operated byBent County Sheriff's Office
- Address11100 County Road GG.5, Las Animas, CO 81054
- Capacity94 inmates (built 1999-2000 with an original 46-inmate capacity, replacing a 1902 jail; expanded to 94 beds in 2020)
- Agencies using the facilityBent County Sheriff's Office, Otero County Sheriff's Office, La Junta Police Department, Kiowa County Sheriff's Office, Cheyenne County Sheriff's Office, Colorado Department of Corrections (back-log inmates), Colorado Parole
- StaffingJail Division: Lieutenant, two Sergeants, corporals and Deputy Sheriffs; also handles courthouse security and transport
Source: Bent County Jail — About · checked 2026-08-24
Transparency rating
4/10Partial- ✓The jail is named
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✓Beds and daily population
- ✗What it costs taxpayers — not published
- ✗Deaths in custody — not published
- ✗PREA audits — not published
- ✗Independent inspection — not published
- ✓Who else it holds, and for how much
- ✓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 built1999-2000 (opened 2000)
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds94 (originally built for 46; expanded to 94 in 2020)
Since then
- Expanded from 46-bed to 94-bed capacity in 2020
The Sheriff
Sheriff Jake R. Six
- Runs the jailYes — Bent County Sheriff's Office (Jail Division)
- How the office is filledElected
- UndersheriffJay Snow
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Bent County Sheriff's Office · checked 2026-08-24
The Judges
Colorado judges are initially appointed through a judicial nominating commission and then face retention elections; they are state judicial officers, not county officials. The 16th Judicial District also covers Otero and Crowley counties.
16th Judicial District — Chief Judge
- Samuel S. Vigil
16th Judicial District Court — District Court Judge
- Deni E. Eiring
Bent County Court — County Court Judge
- Lance P. Clark
16th Judicial District — Magistrate
- Rodney D. Fouracre
- The county's bond schedule
- Share of the jail population held pretrial
- Median time from booking to first appearance
Source: the state judiciary · checked 2026-08-24
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 boardBoard of County Commissioners →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- The county's Finance/Budget page lists annual budget PDFs (e.g. a 2024 Final Budget document hosted at bentcounty.colorado.gov), but the retrieved 2024 budget PDF is a scanned/image file with no extractable text, so a detention-specific line item could not be confirmed.
- Phone/commissary services are handled through third-party vendors (Access Corrections, HomeWav) whose fee schedules are not reproduced with specific rates on the county's own site.
- Board of County Commissioners (three districts) — Jennifer Scofield, Phil Hemphill, Alan Stump. The page layout does not clearly indicate which name maps to which district number.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Bent 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 2026-08-24 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered