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The Colorado County Commissioners Court approved an architectural assessment for a proposed new county justice center with a jail during its meeting, Monday, April 27.
The assessment will evaluate the condition of the county’s current facilities, including the courthouse, county offices and jail, staff growth projections and budget estimates. County Judge Ty Prause said court officials previously met with the assessors, Brinkley Sargent Wiginton Architects, and spent the day visiting various facilities. Sheriff Justin Lindemann explained the immediate need for maintenance and the increasingly pressing need to expand the conjoined jail and sheriff’s office.
“Our facility has gotten 30 years out of it without any updates. We just started doing the updates recently,” Lindemann said. “… [The building] wasn’t structured to expand necessarily. It was built for the jail purposes, so we got to look at updates and an expansion of the sheriff’s office in the near future.”
Lindemann said the jail has not received any significant maintenance or renovations over the years, which are now required to pass future inspections. He said the facility recently passed a compliance inspection but had a few issues to work on, including prevalent rust, which was first documented in 2024, replacing out-of-compliance sliding doors and more. Prause asked what would happen if the jail failed to pass the next review.
“Then, we shut down, and we have to pay more tax dollars,” Lindemann said. “You have to go to house inmates somewhere else…and employees go with it.”
Lindemann reported that the jail currently houses around 60 inmates, compared to 80 this time last year, but does not have enough space for women and psych inmates. The facility can house a maximum of 10 women and has only one psych cell. If the jail cannot house certain inmates, the county must pay for them to be housed elsewhere and transported to and from that location on court days.
“It’s crowded. But we’ve been maxed out on females for… couple years,” Lindemann said. “We’re housing them at other facilities that average a $100 a day…It is the females that we need to do a future expansion on.”
Lindemann added that the current sheriff’s office space is small, already limited and does not allow for future staff growth. He previously requested more bailiffs and deputies, especially court days in January. Prause echoed both his and Lindemann’s security concerns for court days at this week’s meeting.
“It’s not just the crowding. It’s the protection of our folks that come in to serve as well as victims of crimes, witnesses that we’ve subpoenaed, and a mix of all those in that hallway and out on the floors and two stairwells and one elevator with the criminal defendants as well, which is not a good recipe,” Prause said.
