Leroy Garcia ▲

Senate President Leroy Garcia hopes to persuade his fellow lawmakers that this is the year to reopen the closed Colorado State Penitentiary 2 near Canon City.

It's a goal that new Gov. Jared Polis supports and Garcia believes the 850-bed prison can be reopened as a general intake facility for the meager price of about $1.2 million— pocket change in terms of prison construction costs.

"We should be thinking about the prison in different ways, the same way we changed the purpose of the old Fort Lyon prison (near Las Animas) into a housing project for homeless veterans," Garcia, a Pueblo Democrat, said Thursday.

The continuing fight in the Legislature over the future of CSP 2, as it's called, hasn't really been about costs or needed beds.

For several years, the Department of Corrections has been asking for the virtually unused prison to be reopened, only to run into blasts of criticism from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers that the state should be sending more prisoners to community corrections and parole to resolve any future crowding problem.

Garcia said the prison — opened in 2010 as a solitary-confinement institution but closed in 2012 — could be used as a general-intake facility, a temporary location for state prisoners who are awaiting assignment elsewhere.

The $1.2 million would pay for building a recreation yard and other amenities to make it a general-population prison.

Garcia said some critics of reopening the prison are concerned it would become a solitary-confinement prison again, which is the reason the Legislature ultimately closed it.

Garcia noted that lawmakers will have to pass legislation to reopen the prison as well as an appropriation of money.

"But I'm willing to introduce that bill," he said.

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