The Detention Center
Taos County Adult Detention Center
- Operated byNot found - no county page stating the operator could be opened
- Jail address105 Albright Street Suite O, Taos, NM 87571
- CommissaryDetainees not on restriction may order twice a week, with delivery Mondays and Thursdays; funds added by lobby kiosk, online, or mailed money order. No rates are published.
- Beds, year built, costNot found - no county page carrying them could be opened
- What was triedhttps://www.taoscounty.org/211/Adult-Detention-Center ; https://www.taoscounty.org/217/Sheriffs-Office ; https://www.taoscounty.org/QuickLinks.aspx?CID=24 ; https://www.taoscounty.org/Directory.aspx?did=24 ; https://www.taoscounty.org/directory.aspx?did=28 ; https://www.taoscounty.org/m/directory/department?did=28 ; https://www.taoscounty.org/?pid=game_ranking - all failed repeatedly with robots.txt connect timeouts across more than an hour of retries. Only the Commissary Services page ever loaded.
- Also triedhttps://ballotpedia.org/Steve_Miera_Jr._(Taos_County_Sheriff,_New_Mexico,_candidate_2026) and a Taos News voter guide page, both of which failed to load, so neither is cited
Source: Taos County - Commissary Services (Adult Detention Center) · checked 2026-08-24
Transparency rating
1/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✗Beds and daily population — not published
- ✗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 — not published
- ✗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
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Steve Miera
- Runs the jailNot confirmed - the county's Adult Detention Center and Sheriff's Office pages would not open, so the sheriff's relationship to the detention center is unconfirmed
- How the office is filledElected county sheriff under New Mexico law
- Source noteTaken from the New Mexico Sheriffs' Association's own list of current New Mexico county sheriffs, which was opened and read. No Taos County page confirming the officeholder could be opened.
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: New Mexico Sheriffs' Association - New Mexico County Sheriffs · checked 2026-08-24
The Judges
New Mexico judges are initially appointed by the Governor to fill a vacancy, then must run in a partisan election at the next general election, and thereafter face non-partisan retention elections. District and magistrate judges are state judicial officers, not county officials. In Taos County the magistrate judges named above are the ones who ordinarily set conditions of release at first appearance.
Eighth Judicial District Court - Chief Judge
- Emilio J. Chavez
Eighth Judicial District Court - District Judges
- Steven A. Romero
- Jeffrey A. Shannon
Taos Magistrate Court
- Ernest L. Ortega (Presiding Judge, Taos Magistrate Court)
- Sara Blankenhorn (Magistrate Judge, Taos County)
District serves
- Colfax, Taos and Union counties
- 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
- This entry is still thin. Search results show that taoscounty.org publishes an Adult Detention Center section, a Sheriff's Office page and a staff directory, but every one of those pages failed to load on repeated attempts with robots.txt connect timeouts. Only the Commissary Services page ever returned content.
- named is recorded as yes because that one page, on the county's own domain, names the Taos County Adult Detention Center and gives its address. The other nine checks are recorded as no because nothing was confirmed published, not because the county was shown to publish nothing - the pages that would settle them could not be opened.
- fees is recorded as no: the commissary page describes ordering and deposit methods but publishes no phone, video visit or commissary rates.
- The sheriff's name comes from the New Mexico Sheriffs' Association roster of current county sheriffs, not from a Taos County page.
- New Mexico has no mandatory statewide jail inspection body; the NM Association of Counties accreditation program is voluntary and no status for Taos County was found published.
- NMSA 1978 Section 33-15-3, the death-in-custody statute, applies to private correctional facilities only. County-operated jails have no state death-reporting requirement.
- New Mexico counties are governed by a Board of County Commissioners. The Taos County website could not be opened, so no board membership, agenda or minutes URL is recorded.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Taos 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