The Detention Center
Pitkin County Jail (also called the Pitkin County Detention Facility)
- Operated byPitkin County Sheriff's Office
- Jail address530 East Main St., Suite 103, Aspen, CO 81611 — immediately behind the Court House, adjacent to the parking garage
- OpenedJanuary 1984; the county states it was the first direct supervision jail of its size in the country
- DesignDirect supervision; inmates in individual 65-square-foot cells, each with an outside window; out of cells 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. lock-down
- Health care accreditation statedAccredited by the National Commission on Correctional Health Care (NCCHC)
- FoodProvided under agreement with Aspen Valley Hospital Nutritional Services Department
- Inmate telephone and video providerInmate Canteen
- Detention staffing17.00 FTE in the 2022 adopted budget
- Beds / capacityNot published on the county site
- Design originCounty states the direct-supervision design was chosen by then Sheriff's Director of Operations Bob Braudis to replace a cage in the courthouse basement
Source: Pitkin County — Jail · checked 2026-08-24
Transparency rating
4/10Partial- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✗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 built1984 (opened January 1984)
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- BedsNot found
Since then
- The county's 2022 adopted budget states the jail would undergo a remodel to address safety concerns in the booking, intake, master control, work release and medical areas, described as a temporary fix that does not address the housing area.
The Sheriff
Sheriff Michael Buglione
- Runs the jailYes — the Pitkin County Jail is a division of the Sheriff's Office
- How the office is filledElected county sheriff
- Sheriff's office address530 E. Main St., Suite 103, Aspen, CO 81611
Still needed
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Pitkin 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. County court judges typically set bond at first appearance; the jail's bond page publishes the CRS 16-4-102 notice of a payer's legal rights and the county's Certificate of Compliance.
9th Judicial District Court — Chief Judge
- Anne K. Norrdin
9th Judicial District Court — District Judges
- Alexander Haynes
- Laura Makar (also Water Judge)
- Elise Myer
- Susan Ryan
Pitkin County Court — County Court Judge
- Ashley Andrews
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 →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- Pitkin County publishes unusually well for its size. The Current Inmates List resolves to a live Inmate Location Summary Report PDF on the county's own domain (https://jail.pitkincounty.com/jail.pdf), which lists name, age, sex, booking date, offence and bond amount.
- Capacity is 'no': the county describes the direct-supervision design and 65-square-foot individual cells but publishes no bed count and no daily population figure.
- PREA is 'no': the Jail page sets out the county's zero-tolerance PREA policy and gives a reporting route (9th Judicial tipline 970-384-3535), but no PREA audit report or result is published.
- Inspections is 'no': the county states the jail is accredited by the National Commission on Correctional Health Care, but no inspection or accreditation report is published. The 2022 adopted budget does refer to safety deficiencies identified by facility assessments, without publishing the assessments themselves.
- Contracts is 'no': the county's 2022 adopted budget records an agreement with Garfield County to house Pitkin County inmates at the Garfield County Jail while safety work was done, with Payments to Garfield County budgeted at $170,000 — that is Pitkin paying to place its own prisoners, not holding another agency's prisoners, and no per-diem rate is published.
- Budget is 'yes': the county's Budget Archive links full budget documents on the county domain. The 2022 budget (https://pitkincounty.com/DocumentCenter/View/28685/2022-Pitkin-County-Budget) carries a Detention cost centre with a 2022 proposed total of $3,221,931 across personnel, professional and technical services, property services, other services, supplies and other expenditures, at 17.00 FTE.
- Fees is 'no': the Jail Visitation page states that the lobby kiosk video visit is free and that remote video visits from home carry 'a minimal charge', and names Inmate Canteen as the telephone and video provider, but no rate schedule is published. Visits are 20 minutes; no personal contact visits since 8 April 2019.
- No death-in-custody report was found on the county site. Colorado's statewide Jail Data Dashboard (https://ors.colorado.gov/ors-jaildata) collects quarterly population and death data under CRS 17-26-118, but that is state publishing and does not satisfy the county-site checks.
- The county's 2026 budget pages (2026 Budget Book, October 14th Proposed Budget) require a website login and could not be opened; the Budget Archive page itself is public.
- The bond page notes that from 27 February 2026 all surety bonds must be posted through the eBonds platform under HB25-1015, and that online credit-card bond payment carries a 2.9% processing fee charged by the card processor.
- Board of County Commissioners — five members representing districts but elected at large: District 1 Patti Clapper, District 2 Ted Mahon, District 3 Greg Poschman, District 4 Jeffrey Woodruff (Chair), District 5 Francie Jacober. Meeting room at 530 E. Main St., Aspen. No dedicated jail or detention sales-tax levy was found published.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Pitkin 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