At least 1,089 people have died in custody in Colorado

How deaths in custody are reported in Colorado

The Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC) gives a yearly count of deaths in custody in its Annual Statistical Report, by fiscal year (July to June). The count covers people in state and private prisons, community corrections and other placements under the department's jurisdiction, shows how many deaths happened in community corrections, and breaks them down by cause; for fiscal 2024 it counted 46 deaths, 6 of them in community corrections.¹ It leaves out executions, deaths of people on parole or intensive supervision, and deaths in state-run facilities in other states, and the report names no one.¹ The most recent report the department had posted by November 2025 covered fiscal 2024.²

Colorado law requires the county coroner, working with law enforcement, to inquire into the cause and manner of any death caused by a peace officer or that happens in law enforcement custody or in a public institution.³ After at least two people died at the privately run Bent County Correctional Facility in June 2026, the department's Office of the Inspector General led the investigation; the department said it would release no details while the investigation was open, and the coroner withheld the causes until autopsy and toxicology results came back.⁴

Under House Bill 19-1297, signed on May 31, 2019, every county jail must report to the Division of Criminal Justice (DCJ) each quarter, including the number of people who died in the jail since its last report, and DCJ must publish the figures.⁵⁶⁷ DCJ shows them on a jail data dashboard and in a downloadable file, as counts by county and quarter, with no names, dates or causes of death.⁶⁸ Fourteen counties do not operate a jail.⁶ Under House Bill 26-1039, municipal jails must follow the same jail data rules from July 1, 2027.⁹

For the federal Death in Custody Reporting Act, DCJ's Office of Adult and Juvenile Justice Assistance and Office of Research and Statistics collect a report on each death of a person who was being arrested, was detained, or was held in a jail, prison or juvenile facility. Police departments, sheriffs, the Department of Corrections and the Division of Youth Services file the reports quarterly through an online form.¹⁰¹¹ Senate Bill 20-217 also requires police agencies to report every use of force that results in a death.¹² DCJ combines the two collections and publishes a yearly report that lists the people who died in encounters with law enforcement, nearly all by name: at least 35 people in 2024 and at least 35 in 2025.¹³¹⁴

The Division of Youth Services, part of the Colorado Department of Human Services, runs the state's youth centers.¹⁵ People held for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Colorado are kept mainly at the Aurora ICE Processing Center, which the GEO Group runs under contract and which holds roughly 1,000 people.¹⁶ ICE publishes its own report on each death in its custody.¹⁷

What has changed

1. 1900On November 16, Preston "John" Porter Jr., 15, was taken from a Lincoln County sheriff on a train near Limon, after days of questioning in the Denver jail, and burned alive by a crowd of hundreds. The coroner ruled that he died "at the hands of parties unknown," and no one was held to account.¹⁸¹⁹ Soon afterward the legislature brought back the death penalty, citing the need to prevent more "lawlessness" like the Limon lynching.¹⁸
2. 1939Joe Arridy, a man with an IQ of 46, was executed on January 6. In 2011 Governor Bill Ritter pardoned him, citing false and coerced confessions, other evidence of innocence and his severe mental disability.²⁰
3. 1997Colorado carried out its last execution, of Gary Lee Davis, by lethal injection. It was the state's only execution after 1976.²¹²²
4. 2017A Denver Post investigation found that deaths in Colorado jails had risen from 11 in 2011 to 24 in 2015, and counted 117 deaths from 2010 to June 2016. Colorado did not require jails to track their deaths and had no statewide reporting system, so the Post sent open-records requests to all 64 of the state's sheriffs.²³
5. 2017Kamyar Samimi, a lawful permanent resident for more than 40 years, died in December at the immigration detention center in Aurora after the facility's doctor stopped the methadone he had taken legally for about 20 years. An internal ICE review found numerous violations of ICE standards.²⁴ The same year, at least two people died by suicide at the state's Mount View Youth Services Center in Lakewood, the first suicides in a Division of Youth Services facility since 2001.¹⁵
6. 2019House Bill 19-1297 required every county jail to report its population, bookings and deaths to the Division of Criminal Justice each quarter.⁵⁷ In the first round of reports, at least 13 counties with jails, Denver among them, reported nothing.²⁵
7. 2020On March 23, Governor Jared Polis signed Senate Bill 20-100, ending the death penalty for crimes charged from July 1, 2020, and commuted the sentences of the three men on death row to life without parole.²⁶²² On June 19, he signed Senate Bill 20-217, which requires police agencies to report every use of force that results in a death.¹²²⁷
8. 2022Melvin Ariel Calero Mendoza, 39, an asylum seeker from Nicaragua, died on October 13 after collapsing at the Aurora detention center, where nurses had answered weeks of foot and leg pain with over-the-counter painkillers and ice. He was the third person to die at the facility since 2012.¹⁶¹⁷ The same year, House Bill 22-1063 created a commission to recommend the first statewide standards for county jails.²⁸
9. 2024House Bill 24-1054 required every county jail to meet the standards adopted by a legislative oversight committee from July 1, 2026, with compliance reviewed by the attorney general.²⁹ House Bill 24-1244 made the autopsy report of a minor who dies in state or local custody available to the public, an exception to the rule that minors' autopsy reports are confidential.³⁰³¹
10. 2026House Bill 26-1039, signed on April 27, extended the jail data reporting rules, the jail standards and the attorney general's reviews to municipal jails, starting July 1, 2027.⁹

How far the official numbers can be trusted

The jail counts are only as complete as the sheriffs' own reports. DCJ notes that not every county reports every required item and that its dashboard reflects whatever each agency submits.⁶ County jails reported at least 164 deaths in their quarterly reports from early 2020 through 2025, but the reports can fall short of other counts.⁸ The reports Denver filed for 2023 add up to three deaths, while Denver Health, the jail's medical provider, counted five; El Paso County's reports for 2022 add up to no more than nine, while The Denver Gazette counted 11 deaths in the jail that year.⁸³²

The federal Death in Custody Reporting Act collection is weaker. In its 2023 plan, DCJ marked only 26 of the more than 200 police departments, sheriffs' offices and state agencies it listed as reporting, and named consistent reporting of deaths involving use of force, "zero" reports for quarters without a death, late reports and updates on deaths still under investigation as problems. It finds missed deaths by searching news and social media, and its process for checking with coroners was still being developed.¹⁰ DCJ's own report on police use of force says the deaths it records "do not reflect all deaths due to limited agency reporting."¹³

CDOC's prison count is a yearly total by fiscal year, with causes but no names. It leaves out people who die while on parole or intensive supervision.¹ Names exist only outside the reports: department records published by the UCLA Law Behind Bars Data Project list at least 907 people who died in Colorado prisons from 2005 through 2024, by name, facility and general cause.³³ When deaths are under investigation, the department may give no details at all.⁴