The Detention Center
Summit County Detention Facility (SCDF)
- Operated bySummit County Sheriff's Office, Detention Services Division
- AddressSummit County Justice Center, 501 N. Park Avenue, Breckenridge, CO 80424
- Beds93
- Average daily populationAbout 30 inmates
- BookingsAbout 1,100 arrestees per year
- Pretrial shareThe sheriff's own page states "Only about a third, or less, of the inmate population have actually been convicted of a crime."
- CommanderJake Straw, Detentions Commander
- In-jail treatmentS.T.A.R.R. (Strategies to Avoid Relapse and Recidivism) provides substance use and mental health treatment inside the facility
- In-person visits"The Summit County Detention Facility is not currently accepting any in-person visits at this time." Video visits are 20 minutes; on-site video visits are free, remote video visits are a paid service
Source: Summit County Sheriff's Office — Detention Services · 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 builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds93
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Jaime FitzSimons
- Runs the jailYes — the Summit County Sheriff's Office Detention Services Division runs the Summit County Detention Facility
- How the office is filledElected county sheriff
- UndersheriffPeter Haynes
- Detentions CommanderJake Straw
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Summit 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. The 5th Judicial District covers Clear Creek, Eagle, Lake and Summit Counties.
5th Judicial District Court — Chief Judge
- Paul R. Dunkelman
5th Judicial District Court — District Judges
- Reed W. Owens
- Karen A. Romeo
Summit County Court
- Robert Gregory
- 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
- Summit County is the strongest county in this group for jail transparency. The sheriff's office publishes the facility name, its 93-bed capacity, an average daily population of about 30, and about 1,100 bookings a year on its own .gov site.
- The sheriff's office moved to its own domain, summitsheriffcolorado.gov; the old summitcountyco.gov/services/sheriff/ pages now redirect there. Both are official Summit County government sites.
- Roster is recorded no: the only offender-lookup route the county offers is VINE at vinelink.com, a third-party victim notification network, not a roster the county publishes itself.
- Bond guidance is detailed and unusually clear — three methods (cash, credit card, bonding agent), an explicit statement that "Bond fees, booking fees, and other fees or debts never need to be paid to secure a person's release on money bond," a $10 bond fee and a maximum 3.5% credit card fee charged after release, and release within six hours of posting.
- Fees is recorded no: the county publishes bond and online-deposit charges but does not publish inmate telephone rates, remote video visit rates or commissary prices. The visitation page says remote video visits are a paid service without quoting a rate, and the inmate services page routes phone funding to CIDNET without quoting a rate.
- The county budget page publishes adopted budget books for 2022-2026, but no separate detention or corrections breakdown was located within the pages opened.
- No PREA audit, independent inspection result, death-in-custody notice or inmate-housing contract with rates was found on either county domain. Pages checked include https://summitsheriffcolorado.gov/about_us/general_information.php and https://summitsheriffcolorado.gov/sitemap.php.
- The state Jail Data Dashboard at https://ors.colorado.gov/ors-jaildata is a state publication under CRS 17-26-118 and does not count for the deaths or capacity checks.
- Board of County Commissioners: Eric Mamula (District 1), Tamara Pogue (District 2), Nina Waters (District 3), each elected from a single-member district to four-year staggered terms. Agendas and minutes are posted through the county's Diligent portal. No dedicated jail or detention sales tax was found on the commissioners' page.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Summit 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