Bent County Jail facing underfunding and understaffing amid multiple jail escapes

BENT COUNTY, Colo. (KRDO) - On Saturday evening, a Bent County inmate and trustee, James Torrez, escaped through a hole in the sheetrock ceiling of a changeout room, one he was supposed to be cleaning.

"The staff at the time was not aware that there were any holes in the ceiling. It was right above the door. They didn't look up," Bent County Sheriff Jake Six said.

Six says staff were around ten feet away but didn't see him escape because he was in an enclosed room and they were doing checks.

Over two hours later, Torrez, who's awaiting trial on multiple felony charges, was located and is now back in custody. They called in around 70 police officers from surrounding jurisdictions to find the inmate.

"I can't thank them enough for coming out for this.  They came in and within an hour and a half we had him back in custody," Six said.

Torrez had been evaluated as a trustee following a long history of non-violence and after being evaluated for risk of escape. Since his escape, Torrez's privileges as a trustee have been revoked.

Sheriff Six says he would prefer to not have any trustees, but lack of funding means the jail has no cleaning staff, which had forced them to use inmates to do the job in the past. Now, the Sheriff has done away with trustees entirely and the jail doesn't have cleaning staff at the moment.

"The main thing is, they should've had a staff member with that inmate while they're cleaning, but most of it's going to come down to a lack of staffing," Six said. "At this point, budgetarily, we are fully staffed," Six said.

Right now, the Bent County Jail houses over fifty inmates and only has two personnel on staff on any one shift. Six did mention another maintenance staff during an interview, but said he was tied up in other projects and his main job was to make sure that locks and other security features were working properly within the jail.

"I went every year and petitioned for more staff for the facility to at least put a couple more on the floor. Our maximum housing capacity is about 100 and even if we housed the maximum, we have two staff on the floor at the time," Six said.

Last night's escape isn't an isolated incident.

Last year, four Bent County inmates escaped through a hole in their pod's ceiling after discovering it was made of sheetrock. Since the escape, Six says the Bent County Commissioners allotted $400,000 to remodeling efforts and increasing security, including reinforcing the ceilings of every pod and space that an inmate would be in without supervision.

"I mean, at some point I was told we had an escape," Six said. "I believe in the 2010s, through the ceiling of the jail. So, I mean, as a logical person, I would have assumed they would have fixed the problem. They didn't."

Six says that they also needed to repair the fire suppression system, adding there were other structural problems exposed with the recent construction, causing the project to take longer than originally anticipated.

"The original estimate was 3 to 5 weeks, and now we're on four months and it's still incomplete," Six said.

The incomplete project partially enabled last night's escape through the fire suppression room. Additionally, last week's deep freeze caused multiple water lines to burst.

"On the cold snap last week, we had several waterlines break the damage to the ceilings throughout the facility. We had some contractors come in to attempt to fix this. One of our primary heating units went out in the facility at the same time during the cold snap, and they opened up the ceiling in several places to access the breaks," Six said.

Beyond the walls of the fire suppression room, a lack of fencing means once inmates escape the Bent County Jail, they're free to run. Six says after last night's escape, Bent County Commissioners agreed to fund the construction of a razor-wire-topped fence surrounding the jail.

"We contacted some neighboring agencies that have some old fencing, and we're going to have cop construction go out there and dig some holes and put a fence around this building," Six said.

The Bent County Sheriff's office will have to use deputies and any other county employee willing to help construct the fence, cutting costs on the labor required. They're also using donated materials from other prisons or jails that have replaced their fencing.

"Our county commissioners struggle to fund our facility," Six said. "My hope is, is that the jail standards bill that the state of Colorado is working on will give them some requirements for minimal staffing."

Six is talking about House Bill 24-1054. Last year, the bill sought to address inadequacies of jail construction and standards on a state level by creating a committee to create standards for jails to meet and find the funding to do so.

Those standards, however, will not be enforced until July 1, 2026. Until then, state officials have yet to find the money to fund upgrades on a state level; instead, leaving it to county taxpayers to fully fund jail systems.

State lawmakers have previously told KRDO13 Investigates more funding for smaller county jails isn't likely in the cards in the coming years, despite creating a "cash fund" to help jails across the state meet new requirements. Per the bill text, the Attorney General would be required to conduct assessments of jails, in conjunction with the advisory committee, for compliance with jail standards.

HB 24-1054 seeks to extend the committee and its efforts until 2033. It will receive its judiciary hearing on Jan. 23.

"I mean, there are jails out there that are worse than mine. All of the small county jails, we're all having the same issue," Six said. "Jails aren't popular with the public anywhere. So they're not well funded yet."