The Detention Center
No county jail — Lake County holds arrestees short-term and houses inmates at the Chaffee County Detention Facility
- Operated byChaffee County (housing); Lake County Sheriff's Office Detentions Division (short-term holding and transport)
- Where prisoners goChaffee County Detention Facility — the 2024 Lake County Sheriff's Office Annual Report states the office 'does not have a fully operational jail' and 'houses inmates in the Chaffee County Detention Facility; however, Lake County transports inmates to and from this facility'
- Short-term holdingThe Detentions page states inmates are held while awaiting court advisement or bond, and that those needing longer than 48 hours are transported to another facility
- Detentions Division address505 Harrison Ave, Leadville, CO 80461 — phone 719-486-4185
- 2024 detention volume246 inmates booked; 190 inmate transports
- Proposed changeThe 2024 annual report says Lake County has proposed amending CRS 17-26-101 (jail in each county) to exempt a county that enters an intergovernmental agreement for a multijurisdictional jail, and describes an effort to construct a holding facility
- What was triedhttps://www.lakecountyco.gov/539/Detentions ; https://www.lakecountyco.gov/359/Sheriff ; https://www.lakecountyco.gov/540/Sheriffs-Office-Administration ; https://www.lakecountyco.gov/774/Annual-Reports — no bed capacity, PREA audit, death or inspection data found
Source: Lake County Sheriff's Office 2024 Annual Report · 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 Heath Speckman
- Runs the jailNo full jail — the Sheriff's Office states it 'does not have a fully operational jail' and houses inmates at the Chaffee County Detention Facility
- How the office is filledElected county sheriff
- UndersheriffC. "Benny" O'Brien
- Sheriff's Office address505 Harrison Ave, Leadville, CO 80461
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Lake County Sheriff · 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. The 5th Judicial District covers Clear Creek, Eagle, Lake and Summit counties.
5th Judicial District — District Court Chief Judge
- Paul R. Dunkelman
5th Judicial District — District Court Judge (Clear Creek and Lake counties)
- Catherine J. Cheroutes
Lake County Court — County Court Judge
- Not found — no county court judge is listed on the Colorado Judicial Branch page for Lake County
- 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
- Lake County is one of the Colorado counties that does not operate a full jail. Its own 2024 Sheriff's Office annual report states the office 'does not have a fully operational jail' and houses inmates at the Chaffee County Detention Facility, with Lake County providing transport. That is the finding, not a gap.
- Because there is no county jail, there is no jail name to publish, so 'named' is recorded as no. The county does publish a Detentions Division page describing short-term holding.
- The county's Detentions page links to the national PREA Resource Center and to VINE, both third-party sites. Neither is a county-published PREA audit result or in-custody roster, so those checks are no.
- The county publishes annual budgets going back to 2011 on its Finance pages, including budget books and line-by-line adopted budgets.
- No published contract or per-diem rate for the Chaffee County housing arrangement was found on the Lake County site.
- Lake County reports jail data 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.
- Board of County Commissioners — three members by district: Andy Lee (District 1), Matt Bullock (District 2, Chair), Elsa Tharp (District 3). Regular meetings are the first and third Tuesday of each month at 11:00 a.m.; work sessions the second and fourth Tuesday. No dedicated detention sales-tax levy was found published.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Lake 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