Projected vs Actual Release Date
A projected release date is a planning date, not a guarantee that a person has physically left custody. For Lake County searches, the distinction is especially important because the local jail operates as a short-hold detention function. The official detention page says Lake County houses people while they await court advisement or bail, and if a person requires longer than 48 hours in detention, deputies transport that person to another facility for the stay. That means the Lake County record may show a local release or transport event while the actual later release belongs to another jail, CDOC, or the court record.
Pretrial detainees usually do not have a computed release date. Their release depends on bail, advisement, court orders, dismissal, transport, or another case event. Sentenced state-prison inmates have CDOC time calculations, but even those calculations must be read with parole rules and any holds or case changes.
Find a Lake County Inmate's Release Date
Start by deciding whether the person is in a county jail path or a CDOC state-prison path. CDOC is the correct public lookup for a state-prison sentence. It is not the primary source for a person who only bonded out of the Lake County Detention Division or was transported to another county jail before any prison sentence existed.
- For a current or very recent Lake County jail event, contact Lake County Detentions at 719-486-4185 and ask whether the person remains in local custody, was released locally, or was transported.
- For a past Lake County custody event, use the Sheriff's Office records request path. The form includes Jail Booking Report, Incarceration History, and other records. It asks for dates of incarceration, name, DOB, aliases, and the record type.
- For a CDOC case, open the Colorado Department of Corrections offender search at https://www.doc.state.co.us/oss/.
- Search by DOCNO when known. If the DOC number is not known, search by last name and first name, and use gender as a filter rather than the only identifier.
- Open the matching offender record and read custody status, facility or location, parole-related data, discharge information, and date fields together.
- If the person is not listed in CDOC, check the Lake County court case, the receiving jail, VINE, or federal systems before assuming there is no custody history.
The home page explains the full Lake County release-record decision tree. For projected date questions, the most important division is county jail versus CDOC.
CDOC Search Fields and Date Labels
The CDOC offender search presents fields for DOCNO, last name, first name, and gender. DOCNO is the most precise starting point because common names can produce multiple matches. A name search should be checked against any identifiers the record displays. If the search does not return the person, that may simply mean the person was never sentenced to CDOC or is in a county, federal, immigration, or court-only path.
| CDOC field or concept | How to read it |
|---|---|
| DOCNO | The CDOC offender number. Use it first when available. |
| Name fields | Search by last and first name when DOCNO is not known. Compare matches carefully. |
| Gender filter | A filter to narrow matches, not a stand-alone identifier. |
| Custody or location | Shows state-prison or supervision context when the public record provides it. |
| PED and MRD | Colorado release-date concepts defined in parole rules. Labels on public records may vary by status. |
The research source cautions against inventing one universal public CDOC date label. The page should use Colorado's own concepts: Parole Eligibility Date and Mandatory Release Date, then rely on the labels visible in the specific offender record.
PED and MRD in Colorado
Colorado parole rules define the Parole Eligibility Date, or PED, as the earliest possible parole-release date. It is calculated by CDOC time and release operations from sentence length, time served, good-time credits earned or lost, and statute. The Mandatory Release Date, or MRD, is the parole-release date over which the board has no discretion and that mandates release to parole. Those are state-prison concepts. They should not be used to explain a Lake County jail bond-out unless the person later received a CDOC sentence.
Discretionary parole is release after the person has met the PED but before the MRD, at the discretion of the Colorado State Board of Parole. Mandatory parole follows the statutory mandatory release date. The parole rules also define release as the physical departure from the facility on the effective date of parole. That wording matters because a date can be calculated, scheduled, or granted before the person actually leaves custody.
Earned Time and Colorado Statutes
C.R.S. 17-22.5-403 is the main parole-eligibility statute for this research. For many Colorado felony sentences, parole eligibility occurs after the person has served 50% of the sentence imposed, less earned time authorized under C.R.S. 17-22.5-405. Certain violent offenses have special rules. For many listed violent offenses committed on or after July 1, 2004 and before January 1, 2025, the statute used a 75% parole-eligibility framework less earned time. For certain listed violent offenses committed on or after January 1, 2025, the statute uses an 85% requirement and limits the use of earned time to reduce that threshold.
C.R.S. 17-22.5-405 governs earned time. It authorizes earned time, not to exceed 10 days for each month of incarceration or parole, when an inmate demonstrates consistent progress in statutory categories certified by the case manager or community parole officer. Earned time can change release calculations, but it is not automatic and cannot be calculated reliably from the outside without the CDOC time computation, offense category, credits, and case status.
County Jail vs CDOC Dates
A Lake County jail release is controlled by local and court events. Those include bail, personal recognizance, court order, time served, sentence credit, dismissal, transport, or transfer to another agency. The Lake County Sheriff's Office records request form is the local source for Jail Booking Reports and Incarceration History records. It says to wait at least 10 business days from the incident so the record can be submitted, reviewed, corrected, and approved, and it says requests are generally processed in 3-7 business days with exceptions possible.
CDOC formulas apply only after a state-prison sentence exists. A person may start in Lake County custody, move to a receiving county facility because of the 48-hour short-hold rule, and never become a CDOC inmate. In that case, the release date may be in the receiving jail's record or in the Lake County Combined Court case, not in CDOC. If the person is sentenced to CDOC, then CDOC dates and parole-board concepts become central.
Why a Projected Release Date Changes
Colorado release dates can change for ordinary records reasons and for legal reasons. A projected date should be treated as current information from the source system, not as a permanent promise.
| Factor | How it can affect the date |
|---|---|
| Sentence credits or jail credit | Credits may be applied, corrected, or disputed, changing the time calculation. |
| Earned time | Earned time may be granted, withheld, or lost under CDOC rules and statute. |
| Offense category | Some offenses fall under 50%, 75%, 85%, or other statutory frameworks. |
| Consecutive sentences | Multiple sentences can calculate differently from a single sentence. |
| Parole board action | The board may grant, deny, defer, table, refer, suspend, or rescind parole depending on the case. |
| Detainer, warrant, or new case | A pending hold or unresolved case may delay actual departure even when a date exists. |
| Parole plan or discipline | An unresolved plan, disciplinary issue, or rescission hearing can prevent release on the expected day. |
Lake County's 48-Hour Date Problem
The distinctive projected-date issue for Lake County is not a local good-time formula. It is the county's short-hold model. The Detentions page says Lake County holds people while they await advisement or bail, then transports people who need longer than 48 hours in detention. A searcher may ask for a Lake County release date when the later custody event actually happened somewhere else. That is why the first question should be whether the person was released from Lake County custody, transported to another facility, sentenced to CDOC, or released by court action.
Use Lake County for the local booking and transport event. Use the receiving jail for the later local custody release. Use Lake County Combined Court for bond changes, sentence, time-served disposition, probation, dismissal, and other case events. Use CDOC for state-prison release calculations, PED, MRD, parole, and discharge. Use BOP only for federal prison cases, where BOP explains that a past release date with no facility location means the person was released from BOP custody on that date.
Confirming a Release Date
For a current CDOC case, confirm the date in the CDOC offender search and, when parole is involved, compare it with the parole board calendar and the offender's parole status. For a county-jail event, confirm through Lake County Detentions, the Sheriff's Office records channel, or the receiving jail if Lake County transported the person. For court-driven releases, use Lake County Combined Court records because the court case explains bond, sentence, probation, dismissal, or time served.
Colorado VINE can help when the need is a release or transfer alert for a named person in a participating custody system. It is not a historical archive, but it can notify registered users about custody-status changes. Use the VINELink Check page for the one-person search and alert-registration steps.