The Detention Center
Montrose County Jail
- Operated byMontrose County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address1200 N. Grand Ave., Montrose, CO 81401 (mailing address published for inmate mail)
- Beds"room for up to 178 inmate beds" following the remodel completed in 2024
- Daily population"averages between 60 and 130 inmates on any given day"
- Who it holdsMontrose County and the cities of Montrose and Ouray; people charged with anything from misdemeanours to serious felonies
- Custodian"In accordance with Colorado Revised Statutes, the Montrose County Sheriff is the official custodian of the jail."
- Booking and bond fees$30 booking fee (not charged to those held on a writ from another county facility), $5.50 welcome pack fee on transfer to a housing unit, and a $10 bond fee per bond written. The county states that under HB21-1280 bond fees, booking fees and other fees never need to be paid to secure release on money bond.
- ProgrammesMedical and mental health care, educational opportunities and vocational training
- What was triedThe Sheriff's Office site is JavaScript-gated and returns no static content to a plain fetch; its pages were read by retrieving the HTML directly. https://www.montrosecounty.net remained unreachable, so no county-budget detention line was confirmed.
Source: Montrose County Sheriff's Office — Montrose County Jail History · checked 2026-08-24
Transparency rating
4/10Partial- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✓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 — 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 built1998 for the current jail at the Justice Center complex; the county's first jail opened in 1882 and was replaced by a two-story brick building in 1921
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds178 (after the 2024 remodel); 149 when the Justice Center jail was completed in 1998
Since then
- 1921 — two-story brick building replaced the 1882 wooden jail, with separate cells for men and women
- 1970s and 1980s — modernisation of plumbing, electrical and security raised capacity to more than 100 inmates
- 1998 — Sheriff's Administration building, jail and Work Release facility completed at the Justice Center complex; jail capacity 149
- 2008 — major renovation centred on a new intake and processing centre
- 2024 — remodel completed following a 2016 evaluation, adding about 6,000 square feet of upgraded space and 5,000 square feet of new construction covering booking, medical services, the kitchen, a video courtroom and a secure vehicle sally port; capacity now up to 178 beds
The Sheriff
Sheriff Gene R. Lillard
- Runs the jailYes — "In accordance with Colorado Revised Statutes, the Montrose County Sheriff is the official custodian of the jail. The Sheriff is responsible for the care and housing of inmates, transportation of prisoners, execution of writs, and support of court operations."
- How the office is filledElected county sheriff under Colorado law
- Took officeEarly 2019 — "When I took office in early 2019, I committed to elevating the Montrose County Sheriff's Office into a proactive, professional, and responsive agency." The same message opens "Serving as your Sheriff for the past seven years..."
- BackgroundBegan in law enforcement in 1976 as a full-time patrolman with the City of Montrose and retired as Commander after 43 years
- Size of the office"90+ dedicated employees in Patrol, Detentions, Civil, Records, Victim Advocacy, and Administration" serving about 45,000 residents across 2,200 square miles
Still needed
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Montrose County Sheriff's Office — Message from the 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. In Colorado the County Court judge normally sets bond at first appearance.
7th Judicial District Court — Chief Judge
- D. Cory Jackson (Division 4)
7th Judicial District Court — District Judges
- Laura E. H. Harvell (Division 5)
- Matthew G. Margeson (Division 6)
- Steven L. Schultz (Division 1, also Water Judge)
- Kellie Starritt (Division 2)
- Keri A. Yoder (Division 3)
Montrose County Court — County Court Judges
- Kurt M. Beckenhauer (Division E)
- Ryan L. Hess (Division D)
Still needed
- 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 →
Notes on the record
- Montrose County operates the Montrose County Jail at 1200 N. Grand Ave., Montrose, run by the Montrose County Sheriff's Office. Sheriff Gene R. Lillard took office in early 2019.
- The Sheriff's Office publishes a live current inmate list with booking numbers and charges at https://montrosecountysheriffsoffice.com/inmate-list/, a jail history page carrying bed capacity and average daily population, and a bail bond page. Those support the named, roster, capacity and bond_info checks.
- Fees is recorded no. The county publishes its own booking, welcome pack and bond fees on https://montrosecountysheriffsoffice.com/bonds/, but it publishes no inmate telephone, video visit or commissary rate — those pages direct the public to the vendors customer.cidnet.net and JailATM instead.
- Budget, deaths, PREA, inspections and contracts are recorded no because no page published by the county or its Sheriff's Office was found carrying them. www.montrosecounty.net itself remained unreachable from this environment, so a county detention budget line could not be checked.
- The Sheriff's Office website is JavaScript-gated and returns only a redirect notice to an ordinary fetch. Its pages were read by retrieving the page HTML directly; every URL cited here was opened and read.
- Deaths: 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 and does not satisfy the county-level deaths check.
- Commercial inmate-lookup sites carrying Montrose County jail data were returned by search and were deliberately not used or cited.
- Board of County Commissioners — three members. The county's commissioner page exists at https://www.montrosecounty.net/172/County-Commissioners but could not be opened, so no names are recorded.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Montrose 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