Colorado

The Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC) runs the state’s prison system — about 19 state-run prisons plus two operated by a private company under contract — holding more than 17,000 people, as of 2025. CDOC’s own systems use the word “offender” (its locator is the “Offender Search”); these guides use plain language.

The line between a state prison and a county jail is sentence length. A felony prison sentence — generally a year or more — is served in a CDOC state prison; shorter sentences and detention before trial are served in a county jail run by that county sheriff. So a person awaiting trial or serving a short sentence is held in a county jail, not a state prison, and that county sets its own visiting, mail, and phone rules.

Everyone entering a Colorado state prison is processed first at a reception center in Denver. Men go through the Denver Reception and Diagnostic Center (DRDC), and women through the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility (DWCF) — about three to six weeks of medical, mental-health, and classification screening before being assigned to a permanent prison. Many women then move to La Vista Correctional Facility in Pueblo, the women’s general-population prison. During this early period a person may not yet be searchable or able to receive visits.

The state’s prisons range from Sterling Correctional Facility (the largest) in the northeast, to a cluster of prisons in Cañon City — including the Colorado State Penitentiary, the state’s maximum-security institution. San Carlos Correctional Facility in Pueblo is the system’s residential mental-health treatment prison. Two prisons, Bent County and Crowley County, are operated by a private company under state contract but follow CDOC rules. Colorado abolished the death penalty in 2020, so the system has no death row.

A separate Youthful Offender System in Pueblo (for certain young people sentenced as adults) and the state’s community-corrections programs are distinct from the adult prisons listed here.

To find where someone is held, search the CDOC Offender Search by name or DOC number. Note that VINE covers Colorado county jails, not state prisons — for a person in CDOC custody, use the Offender Search to locate them and CDOC’s Victim Notification Program for release alerts. If a person does not appear in the Offender Search, they are most likely in a county jail — contact that county.

Use the guides below for the statewide rules at CDOC prisons, or go straight to a specific facility.