Gov. Bill Ritter today will sign several bills that aim to lessen punishment for criminals and promote rehabilitation among the convicted.

Curbing the rate at which criminals reoffend has been part of Ritter’s agenda since taking office, but this year was the first that he and bipartisan allies targeted controversial topics such as sentencing and parole reform to pay for it.

Jailing fewer low-level drug offenders, diverting more criminals to community programs and paroling inmates more often could save more than $91 million over five years — though critics doubt the estimate — and fund an array of treatment programs, according to legislative estimates.

Colorado joins several other states in shifting limited resources from containment to treatment, though critics say the changes endanger public safety by tinkering with a system that works.

Ritter said enhancing treatment options is the best way to ensure criminals snared by the justice system emerge productive members of society.

“The attitude has been ‘Just lock them up.’ We’ve really seen violent crime decrease over time, but the downside is we weren’t … spending time considering these are actually health issues and public safety issues,” the Democratic governor said. “This is the biggest year in terms of a major policy shift. The sentencing policy is a more difficult nut to crack. Always has been.”

Lowering penalties

The biggest bills came from the Ritter-convened Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice, a mix of prosecutors, public defenders, law enforcement, human services officials, lawmakers and other advocates.

Ritter pointed to the lowering of penalties for some drug offenses as the epitome of the philosophical shift afoot in the state’s criminal justice system.

House Bill 1352 increases the amount of drugs a person can posses before facing jail time, instead diverting offenders to substance-abuse treatment centers paid for by the savings on avoiding incarceration.

Other bills that passed with bipartisan support ease parole restrictions, emptying more prison beds and instead paying for services that aid those on probation and help recently released inmates find housing and employment.

House Bill 1360 lessens penalties for parolees who make technical violations. House Bill 1338, makes it easier for people previously convicted of two or more nonviolent felonies to obtain parole. And House Bill 1374 increases the amount of time off their sentences that well-behaved inmates can earn for each month served.

Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey favors treatment, but he predicts the reforms will make the streets less safe by allowing drug dealers to peddle greater quantities and put people back on the street before they’re ready.

He already commonly diverts juveniles to community programs and operates the largest drug court in the state, he said.

“In my community, the streets are safer than they’ve been for decades. There’s a reason for that,” Morrissey said.

A former Denver district attorney himself, Ritter set his sights on curbing the rate at which criminals reoffend — called recidivism — in his first State of the State speech as governor.

Investing in change

His budget chief, Todd Saliman, made it his first task when tweaking the 2007-08 budget, and during Ritter’s term the state has pumped more than $17 million into prison- and community-based rehabilitation, education and prevention programs, by his office’s calculations.

The $6.9 million Ritter spent in four years on human-services programs for offenders and in the Department of Corrections’ mental-health and substance-abuse programs overshadows the $5.2 million spent in those areas in the prior decade, budgets show. Previous governors in that time frame outspent Ritter by a 3-to-1 ratio on programs diverting offenders to community corrections facilities instead of prisons, however.

Some of the additional funds in 2008 went to Denver’s Arapahoe House, where chief executive David Murphy and his staff were able to open a combination of intense in-patient treatment and ongoing counseling for about 180 women with substance-abuse problems a year.

“It’s not a good expenditure of money to just continue to build prisons and prison beds when there is the opportunity to give these people treatment so they can become contributing members of society,” Murphy said.

It’s too soon to tell how effective Ritter’s efforts have been.

Data from before Ritter was sworn in showed Colorado’s recidivism rate increased from 48.6 percent of inmates released in 2002 reoffending within three years to 53.2 percent of those released in 2005.

It will take time to record improvements, said Attorney General John Suthers, who backed many of this year’s changes.

Suthers said prosecutors like himself largely agreed to the constellation of bills because they codified many practices already in place, part of the reason he doesn’t think the state will see much cost savings or reduced prison-bed use.

“It’s too early to tell, and you can only impact recidivism so much,” Suthers said. “And the fact of the matter is, you don’t have to reduce it by 50 percent. If you reduce recidivism by 5 percent, that’s millions and millions and millions of dollars.”

Recidivism rates, by time out of prison

Year released 1 yr. 2 yr. 3 yr. 4 yr. 5 yr.



2002 29.1% 42.6% 48.6% 51.8% 53.8%



2003 29.2% 42.3% 48.4% 52.0% 54.1%



2004 32.9% 46.9% 52.5% 55.1%



2005 33.9% 47.9% 53.2%



2006 33.7% 47.4%



2007 32.7%



Source: Department of Corrections data