The Detention Center
Montezuma County Jail
- Operated byMontezuma County Sheriff's Office — Detention Division
- Jail address730 East Driscoll Street, Cortez, CO 81321
- BedsDesigned to hold 104 inmates
- OccupancyOccupancy normally runs around 90% of capacity
- Year built2001
- Who is heldPre-trial inmates, county-sentenced inmates, parole violators, and inmates awaiting transport to the Department of Corrections
Source: Montezuma County Sheriff's Office — Detention Division · 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
- ✗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 built2001
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds104 (design capacity)
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Steve Nowlin
- Runs the jailYes — the Montezuma County Sheriff's Office Detention Division operates the Montezuma County Jail
- How the office is filledElected county sheriff
- Detention staffingA Detentions Lieutenant, four sergeants and twenty-six deputies including non-sworn staff
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Montezuma County Sheriff's Office · 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. In Colorado the County Court judge normally sets bond at first appearance.
22nd Judicial District Court — Chief Judge
- Todd Jay Plewe
22nd Judicial District Court — District Judge
- William Young Furse
Montezuma County Court — County Court Judge
- Ian James MacLaren
- 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
- Capacity check: the Detention Division page publishes the 104-inmate design capacity and states that occupancy normally runs around 90% of capacity. No daily headcount is published.
- Bond check: the bonding page sets out online payment through AllPaid, cash and bondsman options, and states that effective 1 October 2025 only a $10 bond fee and a credit card processing fee of up to 3.5% may be charged as post-release debt, and that bond, booking and other fees never need to be paid to secure release on money bond. It also states the facility must release a defendant within six hours of bond being posted and notification given, absent extraordinary circumstances.
- Fees check: those are bond-related fees. No phone, video visit or commissary rates are published on the county's own site, so this check is recorded as no.
- Budget check: the county publishes approved annual budgets back to 2012. The Sheriff's Office 'Grants & Budgets' page at https://montezumacounty.gov/sheriffoffice/grants-budgets/ was opened and carries monthly and yearly calls-for-service reports, not budget figures.
- Deaths check: no death-in-custody reporting was found on the county's own site. Colorado counties report jail deaths quarterly to the state Division of Criminal Justice under CRS 17-26-118 (HB19-1297), published on the state Jail Data Dashboard at https://ors.colorado.gov/ors-jaildata — that is the state publishing, not the county.
- Roster, PREA, independent inspections and prisoner-boarding contracts: nothing found on the county's own site.
- Board of County Commissioners — three members by district. Current members: Jim Candelaria (District 1, Chairman), Kent Lindsay (District 2, Vice Chairman), Gerald Koppenhafer (District 3, Commissioner of Deeds).
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Montezuma 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