The Spring Creek Juvenile detention Facilty in Colorado Springs at the ribbon cutting ceremony and open house in 1998. (Denver Post file photo)

Colorado is closing two youth detention centers after the number of kids being sent to such locked facilities dropped to levels not seen since 1998.

The closures come as the total number of youths in the detention system dropped 32 percent, from 1,480 to 1,000, since 2006. Report by Denver Post.

“That’s a pretty dramatic shift in youth corrections,” said John Gomez, state youth corrections director. “It is good news. There are fewer kids going to detention.”

The reduction in Colorado juvenile detentions follows a national trend, Gomez said.

He credited programs that identified substance abuse, delinquency and familial problems earlier with reducing the number of youths entering the juvenile justice system.

The Division of Youth Corrections will close the 20-bed Sol Vista Youth Services Center in Pueblo and the 24-bed Marvin W. Foote Youth Services Center in Englewood.

The Sol Vista building, which is on the grounds of the Colorado Mental Health Institute, will be used for a substance-abuse program.

Youths now at Sol Vista will be transferred to other detention centers, and those at Marvin W. Foote will go to Mount View Youth Services Center in Jefferson County.

Reggie Bicha, executive director of the Department of Human Services, said the state will try to place employees in vacant department or state positions.

The decrease in the number of kids going to secure youth facilities also happened as the state moved more kids out of locked facilities and into private community-based residential programs.

Youths who primarily have a substance- abuse issue are getting treatment at a community facility instead of going to detention, he said.

“The right kids get the right level of intervention,” he said.

Officials are weighing the risks that kids pose to the community and making decisions whether to send them to detention or treatment based on those assessments, Gomez said.

“We don’t want to over-incarcerate kids,” he said.

Doug Wilson, Colorado public defender, attributed some of the reduction in detentions to a push to reduce the number of juvenile offenders with lesser offenses being sent to locked detention facilities.

“Why would you put truants in there?” he said.

There has been an emphasis on identifying which kids need help when they are very young and addressing their needs before they get deeper into trouble, Gomez said.

Social workers are meeting with juvenile justice professionals to intervene with kids early, he said.

Garcia said closing the juvenile facilities won’t necessarily result in cost savings, however, because the money is being shifted to treatment programs designed to keep kids out of detention.

Tammy Colorado, Juvenile Justice, Prison, Jail, Facility Closures

Faced with a budget crunch that forced him to lay off deputies, El Paso County CO Sheriff Terry Maketa has tapped a new source of revenue: illegal immigrants.  Report from the Denver Post.

Maketa has started leasing space in his jail to house an average of 150 immigrants a night for federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He also sent 17 jail deputies for training in immigration procedures so they can initiate deportations without waiting for federal agents.  ICE pays $62.40 a night for each detained immigrant, plus mileage for transport in sheriff’s vans. The arrangement pumped $3.6 million into El Paso County over the past year and now provides 10 percent of the jail’s budget.

But Maketa said the money is just one factor driving his broadening alliance with ICE.  “I feel like we’re truly contributing to (solving) a national problem,” said Maketa, one of 67 law enforcement agency chiefs nationwide who have had deputies authorized to enforce federal immigration laws … Several Denver-area sheriffs — annoyed at delays in relying on a limited number of ICE agents to handle possible illegal immigrants in jails — say they’re considering sending deputies for federal ICE training.   There’s support from taxpayers to take the next step” in immigration enforcement, Jefferson County Sheriff Ted Mink said …

On any given night, most jails in the Denver area and across Colorado hold suspected illegal immigrants. Under state law, jailors must notify ICE and, if ICE is interested and able, the agency places a hold on the inmate. If ICE agents fail to pick up the inmate within 48 hours, the inmate is released when local charges are resolved.  But that raises public safety concerns and is not something the public wants, said Weld County Sheriff John Cooke, who added that he, like other sheriffs, had previously been reluctant to take on an immigration role. “Everybody’s attitude was: ‘That’s the job of the federal government, and we’re not going to do it for them.’ Well, when the federal government isn’t doing their job, the sheriffs get frustrated and the citizens get frustrated,” Cooke said. “We’re going to do the right thing for the citizens of our counties.”

On a recent night in Maketa’s El Paso County jail, more than 200 immigrants from Mexico, Taiwan and elsewhere were incarcerated … [D]eputies immediately start federal deportation proceedings — and start billing ICE for the cost of housing those inmates.  “When county budgets are decreasing, this is a revenue source,” detention bureau chief Paula Presley said …

Denver authorities oppose any increased collaboration with federal agents, beyond the notification all counties must make, under state law, when suspected illegal immigrants are jailed for crimes.  “We don’t help out the IRS either,” said Bill Lovingier, Denver undersheriff and director of corrections. Enforcing the civil offense of being in the country illegally “is a federal responsibility. It’s a federal issue. If they want local help, they should provide us resources. We are already stretched.”   The County Sheriffs of Colorado association remains “quite strongly against doing the feds’ work” on immigration, executive director Don Christensen said. “We feel we can’t get the support from the federal government that we should have. When we do find (illegal immigrants), they don’t come and get them. They fill up our jails and we have to turn them loose,” he said.

A great deal more information and background is available in the article at Denver Post.

vericatrajkova CO El Paso County, Economic Issues, ICE, Immigration Issues / Illegal Aliens

Weld County CO is moving ahead with plans to build its own work-release facility after problems surfaced last year at The Villa, which used to house a similar center, according to the Greeley Tribune.

The Greeley City Council approved a Planned Unit Development for the new work-release site … on Tuesday night. Weld County will own it, but contractor Intervention Community Correction Services will run the work-release site.

The Villa, operated by the Oklahoma-based company Avalon, came under fire after reports surfaced detailing sexual liaisons between staff and inmates and a tunnel that held weapons and drug paraphernalia. Work-release offenders were then moved to the Weld County Jail, where they will remain until the new facility is complete …

Construction on the new site — which will house 228 people in more than 35,000 square feet in its first phase of building — will begin in a few months, Weld officials say.   There also will be second and third phases of construction. The second will add 72 beds and more than 16,000 square feet. A third construction phase will come later, officials said … The facility will run 24 hours a day. Guards will be unarmed and there will be no lockdown ability. At the facility, the program participants will be able to leave for work while others will come to the facility to meet caseworkers and to routinely take drug tests.

Monica Mika, director of Weld County’s Administrative Services, said the facility offers a better alternative to simply jailing everyone.  “We know as a nation that we can not continue to just build jails,” Mika said.

vericatrajkova CO Weld County, Prison and Jail Construction, Work Release

The New York Times‘ Green Inc blog recently published an interesting survey of environmental projects within the corrections’ industry.  A sample:

Instead of reporting to the laundry or the kitchen or the boiler room, a Washington state prison inmate may report to the compost heap [if they are] taking part in a “green work” program at the Cedar Creek Corrections Center. Inmates grow organic produce, compost the prison’s food waste, take part in ecological research projects with a nearby university, and even produce honey from the prison’s own hives.  The Washington State Department of Corrections boasts 34 LEED-certified facilities, with 923,789 square feet of LEED-certified space added in fiscal year 2008 alone …

This fall, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation announced 16 new green retrofitting projects, which they estimate will save $3 million in energy costs each year. The state already has solar power fields at two facilities, and plans to build six more in the coming year. A new $176 million juvenile detention facility in Alameda County — home to Berkeley and Oakland — recently became the country’s first jail to receive LEED gold certification.  Other green projects — from wind turbines to biomass boilers — have been announced by Departments of Corrections in Virginia, Nevada, and Indiana…

Ken Ricci, of Ricci Greene Associates, is currently working on a new $120 million detention center in downtown Denver, which the company plans to submit for LEED certification. “There’s a recognition that sustainable, or ‘green’ design, is actually a plus for a population that’s confined 24 hours a day,” Mr. Ricci said. “Environment cues behavior. If you treat people like animals, they behave like animals.”  Mr. Ricci … says design elements that earn LEED points, like daylighting and access to views, also improve security. “If you treat them like human beings — that is to say, there’s daylight coming in, the noise level is at a normative level — therefore your adrenaline level goes down, therefore your stress level goes down, the inmates feel safer.”

vericatrajkova CO Denver County, California, Colorado, Environment and Energy, Indiana, Nevada, Prison and Jail Construction, Virginia, Washington

In this time of economic turmoil some legislators in Kansas and elsewhere say the price of justice is too high. They have introduced legislation to take the death penalty off the books over financial concerns. CNN reports.

“Because of the downturn in the national economy, we are facing one of the largest budget deficits in our history,” state Sen. Carolyn McGinn, a Republican, said in an opinion piece posted on TheKansan.com Friday. “What is certain is we are all going to have to look at new and creative ways to fund state and community programs and services.”   The state would save more than $500,000 per case by not seeking the death penalty, McGinn wrote, money that could be used for “prevention programs, community corrections and other programs to decrease future crimes against society” …

A 2008 study by the Urban Institute, an economic and social policy research group based in Maryland, found that an average capital murder trial in the state resulting in a death sentence costs about $3 million, or $1.9 million more than a case where the death penalty is not sought.  A similar 2008 study by the ACLU in Northern California found that a death- penalty trial costs about $1.1 million more than a non-death-penalty trial in California …

New Mexico, which also has a bill before the Legislature to abolish the death penalty, has already seen a case where costs dictated the outcome. Last year, the New Mexico attorney general’s office agreed to drop the death penalty for two inmates involved in the stabbing death of a guard, Ralph Garcia, during a 1999 riot at the Guadalupe County Correctional Facility.   The change came after the state Legislature failed to provide additional funding for defense attorneys contracted to handle the case by the public defender’s office.  In court documents filed at the time, Attorney General Gary King said his office could not “in good faith under these circumstances” pursue the death penalty against Robert Young and Reis Lopez …

In Colorado, House Bill 1274 proposes to put the anticipated savings from abolishing the death penalty toward the Colorado Bureau of Investigation’s cold case homicide team.

Other States with bills for an economic end to the death penalty include Washington, Montana, Nebraska, Texas and New Hampshire.

vericatrajkova California, Colorado, Death Penalty, Economic Issues, Kansas, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Texas, Washington

Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter announced today that his office, working together with the Department of Corrections, state Sen. Al White and the Joint Budget Committee, is no longer considering closing the Rifle prison to help balance the state’s budget.

“After listening to the concerns of people in Rifle and working closely with the department and the JBC, we believe we can close the budget shortfall without closing this facility,” Ritter said. “The community played a valuable role in sharing its concerns, and I’m pleased we were able to find common ground and reach consensus.”

The recommendation to close the 192-bed Rifle prison was among many budget-balancing suggestions submitted to the Joint Budget Committee last month. Selling the facility, land and water rights would have generated $5 million in revenue and produced an annual savings of $600,000.  The Rifle facility has a staff of 57.

vericatrajkova Colorado, Economic Issues

Options for offenders will decrease and the workload at probation will increase come March 13 in the Seventh Judicial District of Colorado, according to a report in the Montrose Daily Press.

Community Corrections, Inc. is terminating its day-reporting program in Montrose that day. Carrol Warner, chief probation officer for the Seventh Judicial District, said CCI’s grant funding for the program fell to state budget cuts and its non-residential community corrections component has only five current cases … People sentenced to commcorr must successfully complete a residential phase before they can be transferred to the non-residential program, which includes intensive supervision …

Community Corrections, Inc … has been a presence in Montrose for 11 years and its local office oversees day-reporting, electronic monitoring and non-residential supervision.    It can also provide private probation supervision for low-risk cases, which, Warner said, is “extremely helpful”.  “Community Corrections Inc. came in when no one else would help us with that process. Since that time, though, they’ve maintained that office at a loss,” Warner said. “They have been very good to work with, but they just can’t sustain that effort in these times” …

CCI’s situation does not affect plans to build a residential community corrections facility in Montrose, for the Seventh Judicial District. The six-county district is working with another company, Intervention Community Correction Services, and has been hashing out logistics for the past few years … Warner said the building of an ICCS facility could solve Montrose’s looming problem with day-reporting and non-residential commcorr clients.

vericatrajkova CO Montrose County, Colorado, Community Corrections

Colorado prison officials blame a stunning increase in violence and lockdowns on mushrooming gang activity and budget cuts that reduced programs to keep inmates out of trouble.   Corrections chief Ari Zavaras outlined statistics in a briefing to state lawmakers, as reported by the Vail Daily.

Prisons were locked down 148 times in the 2007-08 fiscal year, an 80 percent increase with 66 more lockdowns than in the previous fiscal year, Zavaras said.   Assaults by inmates on other inmates rose 19.5 percent and assaults by inmates on staff went up 11 percent, he said … “In the last eight years, the gang population increased by 85 percent while our inmate population only increased by 42 percent,” said prison spokeswoman Katherine Sanguinetti. More than 9,300 inmates of the total prison population of 23,000 are identified as gang members or affiliates, she said … Sanguinetti said efforts are made to keep rival gang members away from each other, but with such high levels of gang affiliation, “they are going to run into each other more frequently” …

The need for high-security cells will be addressed by a new prison in Canon City, but its completion has been delayed until fiscal year 2010-11 in a move to cut $17 million from the prison budget, Sanguinetti said.   “When the existing (maximum security) Colorado State Penitentiary opened, we had a 66 percent reduction in violence through the system,” she said. “We expect the same effect when the new one opens” …

Inmates also aren’t getting programs designed to change their behavior such as one in which staff took photos of prisoners that were printed and sent to inmates’ families.   Although it doesn’t seem like such a program would cost much, Sanguinetti pointed out “when you have 23,000 offenders, costs mount up.”   Inmate morale wasn’t improved by a cut in prisoner pay from several dollars a day to 60 cents. So-called gate release money given to inmates when they are released from prison has remained at $100 since the 1970s, Sanguinetti said.

One piece of good news:

Zavaras said, is the dramatic decrease in the number of prisoners entering the system.  About 32 inmates a month came into the system in the 2007-08 fiscal year, compared with the usual 100 a month, he said. So far this fiscal year, the number has dropped to 26 a month.   “It definitely is a hopeful trend,” Zavaras said. The overall prison population is expected to increase from 23,567 at the end of this fiscal year to 25,558 in 2021.

vericatrajkova Colorado, Gangs (STGs), Inmate Programs

Only the most serious offenders would be jailed, and some who commit burglaries and drug offenses would be released after being booked, if a Larimer County CO plan to deal with budget cuts is approved.

Larimer County officials are waiting for a judge to approve the proposal, which comes as the sheriff’s office budget was slashed by $1.8 million and 18 employees were laid off. Sheriff Jim Alderden said the cuts forced him to close a 32-bed pod because there weren’t enough officers to monitor it. He says sometimes one officer oversees up to 72 inmates. Jail employees say that has made for a tense environment at the jail, as threats to personnel and violence among inmates increases …

The jail has a 460-inmate capacity but sometimes the number of people in jail hovers around more than 500, officials said. The jail, built in 1983 with 152 beds, has been expanded twice but voters have recently rejected proposals to make it bigger … When the proposal was discussed last month, other options considered were bonding and sentencing alternatives, such as work-release programs or having some inmates serve time on the weekends.  The county currently has about 12,000 nonviolent offenders serving alternative sentences in the community.

vericatrajkova CO Larimer County, Early Release, Overcrowding

Its small size, remote location and challenges in hiring and keeping staff led to a proposal Tuesday to close the Rifle Correctional Facility in Colorado to help the state deal with a budget shortfall.

Gov. Bill Ritter made the proposal following a recommendation by the state Department of Corrections.   “This was a very difficult decision,” said state Director of Prisons Gary Golder, who joined Department of Corrections executive director Ari Zavaras in visiting the 192-bed facility to discuss the plans with staff.   Golder said the decision was made in response to a request by the Office of State Planning and Budget for all agencies to put together money-saving proposals. The state also is proposing closure of the Colorado Women’s Correctional Facility in Canon City … Golder said the state will save about $600,000 a year by housing the Rifle inmates elsewhere, and it will be able to make money by selling the prison property …

Golder said the prison’s 57 workers would have the option of transferring to other state facilities, but [State Senator Al] White questioned how many of them would want to leave the Rifle area.   “Those families are going to have some decisions to make, and that’s not going to be easy,” he said.

vericatrajkova Colorado, Economic Issues