The Detention Center
Valencia County Adult Detention Center
- Operated byValencia County — a standalone county detention department under Warden Randy Gutierrez, not the Sheriff's Office
- Who runs itRandy Gutierrez — Warden, Valencia County Adult Detention Center. Reports to: County government (County Manager / Board of County Commissioners) - the Adult Detention Center is a county department, not a Sheriff's Office division
- Jail address436 Courthouse Road, Los Lunas, NM 87031 (subpages also give 444 Luna Avenue, PO Box 1119, Los Lunas)
- Phone505-565-8900
- WardenRandy Gutierrez
- Beds / rated capacityNot found — no capacity or daily population figure is published on the county site
- Historic population figureCounty commission minutes of 3 December 2003 record an average inmate population of 141 for 15-25 November 2003
- Holds other agencies' prisonersYes — the county's own audited financial statements describe the Adult Detention Center Special Revenue Fund (Fund 422) as funded by 'daily housing fee charged to municipalities for prisoners that are housed at the County Detention Center as well as state corrections distributions'. The per-day rate and the contracts themselves are not published.
- Dedicated taxA 1/8% county correctional facility gross receipts tax funds the detention centre, per the county audit
- Detention finances (FY2016, county audit)Adult Detention Center Special Revenue Fund revenues $1,543,788; expenditures $4,047,708; gross receipts tax revenue $1,008,255; charges for services $296,807; transfers in $2,732,467; ending fund balance $523,249
- Detainee vendors namedICSolutions (detainee telephone), JailATM / TechFriends (deposits, video visits, messaging)
- Year built / original cost / fundingNot found
- What was triedhttps://www.valencianm.gov/departments/detention-center/ and its subpages (visitation, detainee mail, detainees information, money on detainees books, PREA); https://www.valencianm.gov/departments/budget-and-finance/; the county ordinance and resolution indexes; FY2025, FY2023-24, FY22-23 and FY2022 budget-adoption resolutions and the FY17 final budget PDF, all of which are non-text scans; https://www.co.valencia.nm.us/167/Detention-Center on the county's older domain
Source: Valencia County Detention Center · checked 2026-08-24
Transparency rating
2/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✗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 — 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 Denise Vigil
- TitleValencia County Sheriff
- Office address543 Luna Avenue, Los Lunas, NM 87031 (mailing PO Box 1585)
- How the office is filledElected county sheriff (New Mexico county sheriffs are elected)
- Runs the jail?No — the Valencia County Adult Detention Center is a separate county department headed by a Warden. The Sheriff's Office pages say nothing about jail operations, inmates or bond.
- Policy manualSheriff's Office policies published via PowerDMS at https://public.powerdms.com/ValenciaCSO/tree
Still needed
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Valencia County Sheriff's Office · checked 2026-08-24
The Judges
New Mexico trial judges are state judicial officers, not county officials. A judge is initially appointed by the Governor from a judicial nominating commission list, then must stand in the next general election as a partisan candidate, and thereafter faces non-partisan retention elections. In Valencia County the Magistrate Court judges normally handle first appearances and conditions of release; the Thirteenth Judicial District Court handles felony matters.
Thirteenth Judicial District Court (Cibola, Sandoval and Valencia counties) — Chief Judge
- Cindy M. Mercer (Division VI, Valencia County)
Thirteenth Judicial District Court — District Judges sitting in Valencia County (Los Lunas)
- James Lawrence Sanchez (Division I)
- Allen R. Smith (Division III)
Valencia County Magistrate Court (Los Lunas and Belen)
- Miles R. Tafoya (Division I)
- John R. Chavez (Division II)
- Deseri A. Sichler (Division III)
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
- Valencia County is one of the New Mexico counties where the elected sheriff does NOT run the jail. The Valencia County Adult Detention Center is a standalone county department headed by Warden Randy Gutierrez and is listed among the county's departments, while Sheriff Denise Vigil is listed separately among elected officials. The county does not publish who appoints or supervises the Warden; Resolution 2024-38 on appointed officials covers only the Undersheriff, the Sheriff's Executive Secretary and chief deputies of elected officials, and does not name the Warden. That is recorded as not published rather than guessed.
- The 'roster' check is no because the county does not publish a roster itself — the Detainees Information page directs the public to the third-party VINELink service instead.
- The 'budget' check is yes on the strength of the county's own audited financial statements (FY ended 30 June 2016, Axiom CPA's and Business Advisors), which break out the Adult Detention Center Special Revenue Fund (Fund 422): revenues $1,543,788, expenditures $4,047,708, transfers in $2,732,467, ending fund balance $523,249. This is the only readable detention finance document on the county site — every budget-adoption resolution (FY2022, FY22-23, FY2023-24, FY2025) and the FY17 final budget PDF are non-text scans, so no current-year detention figure could be read.
- The county publishes a PREA page stating a zero-tolerance policy and giving two reporting numbers (505-565-8900 and 1-866-654-3219), but publishes no PREA audit report, audit date, auditor name or result. The 'prea' check asks for audit results, so it is recorded as no.
- The county confirms in its own audit that it charges municipalities a daily housing fee for prisoners held at the detention center, and 2004 commission minutes record commissioners asking for reporting on 'revenue that comes in from other municipalities or entities that they were selling beds to'. No contract document and no per-day rate is published, so the 'contracts' check is no even though the practice is confirmed.
- On fees: the visitation page publishes one rate — $0.50 per message through JailATM — and states that on-demand video calls are charged per minute without giving the rate. Detainee telephone service is through ICSolutions and deposits through JailATM/TechFriends, with no published phone, video-visit or commissary price list. The check therefore stays no.
- On bond: the Detainees Information page says staff can give a caller the bond amounts associated with a detainee's charges, but the county publishes no instructions on how to post bail, no bond schedule, and no list of accepted methods. Recorded as no.
- New Mexico has no mandatory statewide jail inspection body. The New Mexico Association of Counties runs a voluntary jail accreditation programme; no NMAC accreditation status for Valencia County was found published on anything opened, so state_inspection is left empty.
- New Mexico's death-in-custody reporting statute, NMSA 1978 Section 33-15-3, applies to private correctional facilities only. County jails in New Mexico are under no state death-reporting requirement, so the absence of a published death record is not a reporting failure.
- Valencia County runs two web domains. www.valencianm.gov is the current official site and is the one judged here. The older CivicPlus site www.co.valencia.nm.us is still live but blocks automated fetching via robots.txt, so its Sheriff and Departments pages could not be opened and are not cited.
- Valencia County is governed by a five-member Board of County Commissioners elected by district: Gerard Saiz (District 1), Troy Richardson (District 2), Morris Sparkman (District 3), Joseph Bizzell (District 4) and Dante Berry (District 5). The board meets at 5pm on the first and third Wednesday of the month at the Valencia County Administration Office, 444 Luna Avenue, Los Lunas. County Manager Jhonathan Aragon is appointed by the Commission as chief administrative officer. The county levies a 1/8% county correctional facility gross receipts tax dedicated to the Adult Detention Center Special Revenue Fund, per the county's own audit. Budget-adoption resolutions are published (for example 2024-49 adopting the FY2025 operating budget) but only as non-text scanned PDFs.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Valencia 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