Clicking on any of the Colorado facilities below will direct you to an information page with Inmate Search, Visitation, Mail, Phone, Email, Most Wanted and FAQ for families and friends.
Long before statehood, Colorado had a prison. The Colorado Territorial Penitentiary opened in Cañon City in 1871, five years before Colorado joined the Union, and the walled prison known as “Old Max” still operates today as the Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility. Its 1929 riot, which left eight officers and five prisoners dead, remains the deadliest in state history. The Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC) became its own cabinet department in 1977 and now supervises adults sentenced to prison and those on parole.
Roughly 18,000 people were incarcerated in CDOC facilities in 2025, below the peak of about 23,000 around 2009 but climbing again. Fremont County, home to Cañon City and nearby Florence, has so many state and federal prisons that it is often called the prison capital of Colorado.
CDOC runs 19 state facilities and sends men to two privately run prisons under contract:
The Youthful Offender System in Pueblo is unusual: it is a program inside the adult system for young people convicted as adults for crimes committed as teenagers, offering a structured alternative to a regular adult prison.
Every man sentenced to CDOC begins at the Denver Reception and Diagnostic Center (DRDC), opened in 1991. There staff complete medical and mental health screening, orientation and classification, then choose a permanent facility. Women are processed at the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility. DRDC does allow short in-person visits, by appointment only, on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, along with video visits for people on an approved visiting list. Visits there last 10 or 25 minutes.
CDOC’s Offender Search finds people in state custody by name or DOC number and shows their current facility. Use the DOC number on all mail and money transfers.
Colorado’s prisons are close to full. CDOC triggered its emergency population management plan for the first time in 2025, and about 700 state prisoners were waiting in county jails for space in early 2026. In March 2026 the governor’s budget office told lawmakers the state expected about 400 more people a year to enter prison than leave on parole and might need one or even two more prisons. Options included buying and renovating the closed 700-bed Huerfano County Correctional Center in Walsenburg for $150 to $200 million or contracting to reopen the Kit Carson facility in Burlington. Staff shortages make any expansion harder.
Gov. Jared Polis signed a repeal of the death penalty on March 23, 2020, for crimes committed on or after July 1, 2020. The same day he commuted the sentences of the three men then on death row to life without parole, so Colorado has no death row. Before 1972 the state and territory executed 101 people, first by hanging and later in a gas chamber at Cañon City. Only one execution took place after 1976: Gary Lee Davis, by lethal injection, on October 13, 1997. One of the most painful cases was Joe Arridy, a man with a severe intellectual disability executed in 1939 and pardoned in 2011.
The Colorado Division of Youth Services (DYS), part of the Department of Human Services, runs both secure detention and commitment for young people. Unlike many states, Colorado’s juvenile detention centers are run by the state rather than counties. DYS operates 10 youth centers:
Juvenile records are confidential, so families should call the youth center or their child’s DYS client manager.
To search for an inmate or juvenile, or to learn how to visit, call, write or send money to someone in the Colorado Department of Corrections or Division of Youth Services, choose a facility from the list below.