The Detention Center
La Plata County Jail (Sheriff's Office Detentions Division)
- Operated byLa Plata County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address742 Turner Drive, Durango, CO 81303
- Jail phone(970) 382-7053
- Detentions Division CommanderMitch Higgins
- Bond postingOnline or lobby kiosk via TouchPay (facility ID 781303), a bail bondsman, or exact-change cash — the jail cannot make change
- Inmate phone / tablet vendorsICSolutions for phones, JailATM for tablets, TouchPay for deposits — no rates published
- ProgramsWork Release Program and an Alternatives to Incarceration division
- Beds / capacityNot published on the county site
- What was triedhttps://www.lpcgov.org/divisions/detentions/index.php ; https://www.lpcgov.org/divisions/detentions/alternatives_to_incarceration.php ; https://www.lpcgov.org/sheriff.php ; https://www.lpcgov.org/divisions/detentions/inmate_telephone_privileges.php — no capacity, PREA, death or inspection data found
- Fetch refusedThe 2026 Adopted Budget PDF redirects to a third-party CMS host (cms9files.revize.com) that would not load, so no detention appropriation figure is cited
Source: La Plata County Sheriff's Office — Detentions Division · checked 2026-08-24
Transparency rating
3/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✗Beds and daily population — not published
- ✓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
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 Sean Smith
- Runs the jailYes — the La Plata County Sheriff's Office Detentions Division operates the county jail at 742 Turner Drive, Durango
- How the office is filledElected county sheriff
- UndersheriffFrank Sandoval
- Detentions Division CommanderMitch Higgins
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: La Plata County Sheriff's Office — Command Staff · checked 2026-08-24
The Judges
Colorado judges are appointed through a judicial nominating commission and then face retention elections. They are state judicial officers, not county officials. County court judges normally set bail at first appearance.
6th Judicial District — District Court Chief Judge
- Kim S. Shropshire
6th Judicial District — District Court Judges
- A. Nathaniel Baca
- Justin P. Fay
- Reid Stewart
La Plata County Court — County Court Judges
- Douglas Reynolds
- Richard Schmittel
- 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
- La Plata County names and describes its detention facility on its own site and publishes detailed bond guidance.
- The county does not host an in-custody roster itself — its inmate search page sends the public to VineLink, a third-party service, which does not count as county publishing.
- The county publishes adopted budgets by year on its Finance and Procurement pages; the 2026 adopted budget PDF redirects to an external CMS host that would not load, so no detention line-item figure is cited here.
- Phone, tablet and deposit vendors are named but no rates are published on the county site.
- La Plata County reports jail population and inmate deaths to the state under CRS 17-26-118 (HB19-1297), published on the state Jail Data Dashboard at https://ors.colorado.gov/ors-jaildata. That is state publishing, not county publishing, so it does not satisfy the deaths or capacity checks.
- Board of County Commissioners — three members, each representing a geographic district but all elected at large: Elizabeth Philbrick (District 1, Vice Chair), Marsha Porter-Norton (District 2), Matt Salka (District 3, Chair). The Board meets on the second and fourth Tuesdays for business and administrative matters, and the first and third Tuesdays for planning and land use. No dedicated detention sales-tax levy was found published.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in La Plata 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