The Detention Center
None — Cheyenne County has no county jail
- Operated byN/A
- Where prisoners are heldCheyenne County Sheriff's Office site links to Prowers County Sheriff's Office detention page (www.prowerscounty.net/departments/sheriff/detention.php — link found on Cheyenne's own site but the target page could not itself be opened to verify its content)
- Bent County Jail relationshipBent County Jail's 'About' page lists the Cheyenne County Sheriff's Office among current agencies using that facility, and separately states the jail 'serves as a back up holding facility for Cheyenne and Pueblo Counties'
Source: Cheyenne County Sheriff's Office · checked 2026-08-24
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Michael Buchanan
- Runs the jailCheyenne County has no jail of its own
- How the office is filledElected
- Where prisoners goThe Sheriff's Office site's 'Detentions' resource links to Prowers County's Sheriff detention page; separately, Bent County Jail's public materials list the Cheyenne County Sheriff's Office as both a current user of that facility and as using it as a backup holding facility
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Cheyenne County — Officials · 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 15th Judicial District also covers Baca, Kiowa, and Prowers counties.
15th Judicial District — Chief Judge
- Tarryn L. Johnson
15th Judicial District Court — District Court Judge
- Mike Davidson
- 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
- Cheyenne County is one of the roughly 14 of 64 Colorado counties without its own jail; it appears to rely primarily on Prowers County (Lamar) for detention, with Bent County Jail available as a backup, per the sources described above.
- Cheyenne County's own site (co.cheyenne.co.us) is a small informational site with no dedicated jail/detention, budget, or transparency pages beyond an Officials directory; all ten checks are 'no' because the county has no jail of its own to publish information about.
- Board of County Commissioners — R.J. Jolly (District I), Ronald Smith (District II), Rick Pelton (District III)
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Cheyenne 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