Think Outside the Cage

As introduced, House Bill 1189, by Rep. Joel Judd, D-Denver, would have made Colorado's penalties against drunken driving the toughest in the nation. First-time offenders would lose their licenses for at least five years, and multiple offenders for 20 - unless they satisified other requirements we'll discuss later.

We're open to the suggestion that the state's penalties against impaired drivers are too lenient. But as originally envisioned, HB 1189 was simply too harsh.

Increases the driver's license revocation period for first-time
DUI/DUI per se violators after July 1, 2007, to 5 years.

Increases the driver's license revocation period for multiple DUI/DUI per se violators who commit a second or subsequent violation after July 1, 2007, to 20 years. (Bill Language)

Fortunately, Judd has had second thoughts and plans to ease some of the penalties before the bill is heard in the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. No law can totally eradicate drunken driving.

If criminal penalties against driving while intoxicated are too severe, motorists who are caught will simply drive without a license. Even with current penalties, federal officials report that 60 percent to 80 percent of drivers whose licenses have been suspended or revoked keep getting behind the wheel.

I think it's called theft by receiving.

..

Denver city attorney Larry Manzanares was put on paid "investigatory" leave Friday after a stolen computer was found in his home, Denver's 7 reported.

Mayor John Hickenlooper put Manzanares on leave after being contacted by Denver's 7.
"We are extremely concerned about the serious issues raised by this situation and the fact that we were not made aware of the investigation until today," Hickenlooper said.
Manzanares told Denver's 7 reporter Tony Kovaleski he had bought the Gateway computer from a man in a parking lot one block south of the City and County Building last month.

SACRAMENTO - The California attorney general on Wednesday charged a private investigator with filing bogus documents to aid four death row inmates, calling the case one of the largest frauds ever perpetrated on the state's criminal justice system.
Kathleen Culhane was arraigned Wednesday afternoon in Sacramento on 45 felony counts of forgery, filing false documents and perjury.
"This is fraud at the highest level," Michael Farrell, a senior assistant attorney general, said after the arraignment.

"This is someone who is trying to undermine the system."

..

.And then there's the sad story of Michael Andre who police found dead in his home after a stand-off in Cherry Creek yesterday.

This story doesn't just leave a bad taste in my mouth, it makes me physically ill.

We should be ashamed of ourselves, as a nation. How do we wrap our national conscience around the fact that CCA is making money off the incarceration of children and families?

Named after the co-founder of the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the T.

Don Hutto Correctional Center in Taylor, Texas, opened as a medium-security prison in 1997. Today, the federal government pays CCA, the nation's largest private prison company, $95 per person per day to house the detainees, who wear jail-type uniforms and live in cells.

But they have not been charged with any crimes.

In fact, nearly half of its 400 or so residents are children, including infants and toddlers.

The advocacy groups -- the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children and Lutheran and Refugee Services -- said they based their complaints on visits to these sites by their members and interviews with detainees.
At the Hutto site, their report said, a child secretly passed a visitor a note that read: ''Help us and ask us questions,'' it said.

The groups reported that many of the detainees cried during interviews.
''What hits you the hardest in there is that it's a prison. In Hutto, it's a prison,'' said Michelle Brane, detention and asylum project director for Women's Commission.

At a news conference, the groups charged that some families are kept up to two years in the facilities, with those petitioning for asylum or trying to prove they shouldn't be deported, remaining there the longest.

Ethan Nadelman the Executive Director at the Drug Policy Alliance, takes on John Walters, the U.S drug czar, who is trying to get Canada to follow in our footstepts on the failed War on Drugs.

He discusses our persistent consistency in pursuing something that obviously isn't working. Ethan puts things into perspective here..

.
The U.S.

drug czar, John Walters, is in Ottawa today, trying his best to put a positive spin on one of the greatest disasters in U.S. foreign and domestic policy.

Part of his agenda is to persuade Canada to follow in U.S. footsteps, which can only happen if Canadians ignore science, compassion, health and human rights.

The United States ranks first in the world in per-capita incarceration, with roughly five per cent of the earth's population but 25 per cent of the total incarcerated population. Russia and China simply can't keep up. Among the 2.

2 million people behind bars today in the United States, roughly half a million are locked up for drug-law violations, and hundreds of thousands more for other "drug-related" offences. The U.S.

"war on drugs" costs at least $40 billion U.S. a year in direct costs, and tens of billions more in indirect costs.

The work-release program in El Paso County will be revitalized. Terry Maketa knows that this program is a vital part of reducing recidivism..

.we are glad to see that it's been given new life.

A multimillion-dollar project is the result of a four to one decision by El Paso County Commissioners for funding expected to help with overcrowded jails.

The money, which will come from refinanced certificates of participation, allows the sheriff's department to reinstate the inmate work release program.
"This gives us temporary relief, it mitigates some of the overcrowding we're facing and it's a very viable option," El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa says.
The program had previously been cut in the county's most recent budget, but can now play a major role in generating revenue to compensate for the project.

"The county has an opportunity to refinance some assets and get a reduced interest rate and I think that is good judgment and good use of the tax dollars," Maketa says. "It reduces the payments that they make on existing facilities."
The funding calls for a renovation of the Metro Detention Center in downtown Colorado Springs, making room for an inmate work release dormitory with room for 375 inmates.

"This gives us the capital we need to start a self funded program which will repay the debt that we're borrowing the money on."

MAKE YOUR VOICE HEARD!!

!!!

!

Your action is needed!
It sure has been a whirlwind at the Capitol.

The Governor announced that
reducing recidivism is one of his major goals during his tenure and has
already requested over $8million for substance abuse treatment, mental health treatment
and additional community corrections beds to fund his plan. There is also a proposal
to award $14 million of the tobacco funds to substance abuse treatment.
The following is an update on issues important to CCJRC and what you can
do to help.

Many thanks to our various coalition partners like the
ACLU (SB 83), the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar (HB 1107),
and the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless (HB 1313) for their leadership.

Item 1.
Save the Date!

March 6th at 9:30am at the House Judiciary Committee
Hearing Room, 0112 - Private prison operators will be making a presentation
before the House Judiciary Committee. CCJRC has been allotted 15
minutes to also make a presentation. Please come, if you can
Item 2.

Update on Senate Bill 83 - that, among other things, would allow people on parole to vote.
SB 83 is still waiting to be heard on 2nd reading in the Senate. We'll keep you posted.

If you haven't had a chance to contact your Senator, you still have time.

Item 3.
Update on House Bill 1107 that would allow people to petition the court
to seal a criminal conviction after 10 years of completing the sentence.

HB 1107 was approved by the House Judiciary Committee in a very strong 9-2 vote.
It is now waiting to be scheduled for a hearing in the House Appropriations Committee.
This should happen sometime in March.

We'll keep you posted.
Item 4. Please support HB 07-1313.

Identifies what documents
the Department of Revenue is to accept in issuing state identification cards,
including a DOC inmate ID.
Hearing Scheduled in the House Energy and Transportation Committee
Tuesday, February 27th at 1:30pm
House Committee Hearing Room 0107
On February 20, 2007, Representative Rosemary Marshall (D) and
Senator Paula Sandoval (D) introduced HB 07-1313 that lists what documents
the Department of Revenue shall accept in issuing state identification cards.
HB 07-1313 would also require that a Department of Corrections photo
ID be one of the forms of ID that is accepted.

Photo identification has become a necessity in daily life. People need an ID to drive,
obtain employment, open a bank account, rent an apartment, and apply for many social services.
Many homeless people and people recently released from prison find it very difficult,
if not impossible, to get a state ID.

Without ID, many people can be denied access
to shelters, motels, clothing closets, food pantries, and certain public benefits.
HB 07-1313 provides clear legislative direction to the Department of Revenue
on the types of documents that should be considered secure and verifiable forms
of identification for obtaining a state ID or driver's license. The documents listed include:
" Passport
" Valid birth certificate and a valid social security card
" Valid driver's license or identification document issued by a state government
" An identify document issued by the department of corrections and a valid social security card
" Documents issued by the U.

S. government granting or recognizing the person's immigration, asylum, or refugee status
" Documents recognized by the U.S.

government to prove identity
HB07-1313 lists that the following documents or combinations be valid
methods of proving that a person is lawfully present in the United States:
" Passport
" Valid birth certificate and a valid social security card
" Valid driver's license or identification document issued by a state government
" Documents issued by the U.S. government granting or recognizing the person's immigration,
asylum, or refugee status
" Documents recognized by the U.

S. government to prove lawful presence
In addition, HB07-1313 authorizes an applicant who is denied a driver's license, permit or
identification card to request a hearing to determine whether the applicant is qualified.
Your support is needed to ensure that Coloradans get the documentation
they need in order to live, work, and maintain their lives here.

Many thanks to the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless for their
diligent work on this issue over the past several years. If you have any questions,
contact Deb DeBoutez at 303.285.

5220 or .

Please contact the members of the House Energy and Transportation Committee
for HB07-1313. Phone calls or emails.

We can't do this without your help.

Representative Alice Borodkin
District 9 Democrat
Denver/ Arapahoe County
303-866-2910
E-mail:

Mentally ill inmates would wait no longer than 28 days for treatment or evaluations under an agreement reached today with state officials.( ) The settlement between state officials and attorneys representing inmates came after a Denver judge issued contempt citations against the state hospital superintendent and the director of the department of human services for failing to provide court-ordered competency evaluations or treatment for inmates.

Denver District Judge Martin Egelhoff, who pushed the state to treat inmates more quickly, was elated Thursday at a hearing where the settlement was announced.
Inmates were caught in a backlog that left some of them waiting as long as six months for evaluations or treatment. The state blamed the backlog on a lack of funding for staff and beds.

...

"Their mental illness was exacerbated and compromised," she said. "They were given meds here and there at the local jails. But lack of immediate help takes them back months and years in their treatment.

"

She added that the hospital staff cares about helping the mentally ill but hadn't received enough money.
"They are rich in the heart but poor in the pocket," Eytan said.
Gov.

Bill Ritter's transition team was involved in the settlement conferences.
"Under this settlement, detainees will get the services they need in a reasonable time frame, the jails can manage their populations better, and the state can meet its obligations," Ritter said.
The agreement will run until a new 200-bed high-security unit at the state hospital is opened in the summer of 2009.

It should easily accommodate criminal defendants who need mental health treatment, officials say.
If the state hospital and the Colorado Department of Human Services fail to meet the 24- and 28-day deadlines, they face hefty penalties, including fines of $1,000 per quarter, per patient.

Carol Chambers is going after more death penalties than any DA in the state put together, all by herself.

She was going after both of the men convicted in a murder earlier this year, but now is told; You can go after one, but not the other.

Is it because one is more guilty than the other? Oh no, it's far more heinous than that, it's because of a "clerical error" or more elegantly put,""It is the grossest incompetence imaginable in a death penalty case, to be this sloppy," defense attorney David Lane told the television station.

"This kind of mistake will result very possibly in striking the death penalty against Robert Ray." ..

.Which would allow the state to kill one man and not another. The whole thing is barbaric and deeply disturbing.

But the district attorney "is moving forward with the death penalty in this case," Chambers' spokeswoman, Kathleen Walsh, said Thursday.
The squish pundits and squash-eating liberals are once again questioning the wisdom of Colorado s death penalty. But that doesn t mean squat to Arapahoe County District Attorney Carol Chambers.

Okay, so the death penalty as practiced here has claimed exactly one life since 1968 - that of the eminently qualified Gary Davis, whose sordid career as a rapist and murderer was examined in unflinching detail in these pages a decade ago in Okay, so the futile effort to make a few of our least wanted pay the ultimate price has cost close to $50 million, with the taxpayer footing the bill for the legal arguments on both sides. So state representative Paul Weissmann wants to abolish the death penalty and plow the savings into solving cold cases. So death penalty cases tend to be a big waste of time, an excruciatingly prolonged and emotional quest for votes and revenge, not justice.

So what?
None of it matters to Chambers. She s always marched to a different tune the executioner s song.

There is a only a small number of women that can participate in this program, but it will give them a sense of hope, so that when they leave prison they feel that they have a marketable skill that may keep them from coming back. What would be best, is if companies like these would have jobs waiting for these folks when they are released, or at least set up referrals so that they have a better shot at being successful.

When Terri Moore is released from the Colorado Women's Correctional Facility in Canon City today, after serving two and a half years for fraud, she'll re-enter society with a brighter future than most felons.

That's because she has spent the past 15 months working five days a week on the Colorado Department of Corrections IT help desk -- and she has already drawn interest from a company that hires ex-cons.
"I've gained a lot there," said Moore, explaining that the job has helped her deal with anxieties she once had over working with or talking to people.
Moore participated in an innovative program developed by the Colorado Department of Corrections in which a handful of female inmates from the nearby women's prison have been working on the agency's IT help desk since 2005.

Corrections officials came up with the idea in the face of planned IT cutbacks.

FLORENCE, Colo. -- Attorney General Alberto Gonzales toured a federal prison holding some of the nation's most violent and disruptive inmates on Wednesday and said the facility is secure, but he conceded that it could be improved.

"Are there challenges? Yes," said Gonzales, the nation's top law enforcement official. "Can we do better?

Yes."

Gonzales agreed to visit the prison, known as Supermax, after Colorado's two senators raised concerns about staffing and security.
He stopped short of promising to increase the number of guards or build an additional fence around the compound, as some state and local officials have advocated.

Instead, he said he was willing to listen.
Senators approved diverting $34 million from tobacco-settlement money Tuesday into health-care programs and the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.
On a 25-10 vote, the Senate passed SB97 by Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald, D-Jefferson County, which would give 49 percent of the money to CU.

Health-care programs - including rural health care, mental-health and drug-and-alcohol counseling for inmates, and immunization programs - would divide the rest.
Sen. Paula Sandoval, D-Denver, said she voted against the bill because nearly half the money would go to higher education rather than health care.

"There just is so much need, and I really feel strongly that those dollars could be better spent on the needy and disabled," she said.

From coast to coast, how small changes in policy can divert a crisis, or create one. My mother always said "if you want to be successful, find someone who is and just do whatever it is that they do.

" We need to decide what we want our own prison crisis to look like in five years, and what success really means to Colorado.
New York's Eliot Spitzer, the tough ex-prosecutor turned governor, wants a commission to examine closing some of his state's dozens of prisons. Meanwhile, Gov.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is pressing for $11 billion in bonds to add 78,000 beds to California's already burgeoning and overtaxed system.
What's going on here?
Partly, it's what both men inherited.

New York's prison population peaked at 71,000 inmates in 1999 but has dropped by 8,000 since. Major explanations: dropping crime levels (especially in New York City) and increased efforts to find alternative treatment for nonviolent offenders.
California's prison population, meanwhile, has continued to surge.

It's now at 173,000 inmates, an $8 billion yearly bill. Overcrowding and threats of riots are so serious that a senior prison official last year warned of "an imminent and substantial threat to the public."
We are very excited to announce that long-time CCJRC member, the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless was awarded more than $4 million from the federal government today.

We'd like to take a moment to acknowledge all the excellent work that these groups have done over the years.

The U.S.

Department of Housing and Urban Development today awarded agencies that serve the homeless in metro Denver more than $9.9 million. The money is a crucial part of the budget for many groups that serve the homeless.

The Colorado Coalition for the Homeless was awarded more than $4 million for a variety of projects, including the 100-unit Renaissance Riverfront project along the South Platte River at Park Avenue West..
The points us to an article that examines how we have no idea how or where to count the 2.

2 million people that we have incarcerated and what the consequences of that are. It's an issue for Colorado since most of our 22,000 incarcerated people are in rural areas spread out across the state, and in time, the prison populations for these rural towns can match or even exceed the real populations of those towns.
TODAY, MORE THAN 2 million people, or nearly one out of every 100 adults, is sitting in a jail or prison in the United States -- an incarceration rate unprecedented in U.

S. history.
The total number of prisoners is not in dispute.

But how to tabulate them is emerging as perhaps the most vexing issue of the 2010 census.
The U.S.

Census Bureau counts prisoners as residents of the towns and counties where they are incarcerated, even though most inmates have no ties to those communities and almost always return to their home neighborhoods upon release.
This has enormous and unsettling political and economic consequences, especially for California. The state banishes many of its urban offenders to prisons clustered in rural areas and intends to send at least 5,000 of its inmates out of state to cope with the prison overcrowding crisis.

...

A provocative analysis by the Prison Policy Initiative estimates that if prisoners held in upstate New York were counted in their home neighborhoods, at least four state Senate seats all Republican would be in jeopardy after redistricting.

As Michigan state Rep. LaMar Lemmons (D-Detroit), a proponent of census reform, said: "Prison is not a residence; it is a condition.

"

Years of get tough on crime policies, mandatory minimum sentences and over incarceration of low-level drug offenders is finally coming home to roost. There isn't enough space or money to run Florence. They can only spread themselves so far, and in response, the nation's highest-security federal prison is resorting to exteme tactics that results in long-term psychological torture of human beings.

United Nations officials have condemned the U.S. use of prolonged isolation and other tactics in Supermax and other prisons, citing the International Convention Against Torture that the U.

S. ratified in 1994.
"This is against international law and against human decency," said Bonnie Kerness, coordinator of the American Friends Service Committee's Prison Watch monitoring campaign.

It's also a place where the extreme isolation of prisoners raises concerns among human- rights advocates about psychological torture.
Gonzales' visit Wednesday - with lawmakers, prison administrators and union leaders in tow - is designed to help tackle these and other troubles that could threaten security at the ultra-high-security Supermax prison and the adjacent high-security U.S.

Penitentiary.
A year ago today, Emily Rae Rice bled to death and was found facedown on the floor of Denver's city jail, hours after she was arrested in an alcohol- related crash.
On Sunday morning, dozens of friends, family members and activists from Denver CopWatch began a 24-hour vigil outside the jail to express outrage over the way she died.

They played music, held signs that read, "The longer she pled, the more she bled," and chanted for justice in her name.
Rice was drinking before the crash, her parents acknowledge, but they say her injuries were then ignored by doctors at Denver Health Medical Center and by Denver sheriff's deputies who worked in the jail.

A Denver Post Editorial points out that we are below average is spending for higher education statewide, we also know that we are dead last when it comes to funding substance abuse treatement.

...

and our budget for prisons keeps going up. The Department of Corrections asked for another $53 million dollars this year and if they get it, that means they win over education who only got an additional $49 million dollars. What a message we are sending.

...

The puzzle over how to fund higher education has been solved at the state legislature for another year: Each of Colorado's public colleges and universities get a little bit of, well, not much.
Rather than tearing "each other to ribbons for a relatively small advantage," as University of Northern Colorado president Kay Norton put it, the schools have agreed to divvy up next year's state funding in the same proportions as this year's funding.
And even though schools came to the Capitol armed with a study showing Colorado's higher education system needing $832 million just to meet the average state funding of their peers across the country, lawmakers could offer only an extra $49 million.

So, even if other states held the line on higher ed, Colorado would need another $783 million just to be average...

. Either way, students heading to campuses across Colorado next fall can expect another round of higher tuition rates.
With prison costs and Medicaid gobbling up greater portions of Colorado's budget, and so many other parts off-limits to cuts, the riddle of higher education funding won't be solved under the current system.