Controversy Over CDOC's Sex Offender Budget

Friday the sex offender lobby group, Advocates for Change (AFC), published their October newsletter reporting that Karl Spiecker, identified only as the Director of Finance, announced in a Citizen's Advisory Meeting held on October 5 that the Governor and the Joint Budget Committee denied CDOC's request for additional sex offender treatment funds.

Spiecker told the group that the state must work within a balanced budget and the priority of funding was with increased medical costs for the state's aging prison population. State records show Colorado has some of the longest sentences in the nation and keeps inmates incarcerated 20 percent longer than the national average.

Spiecker's announcement, however, may have been premature.

On Friday October 28, three weeks after the Citizen's Advisory Meeting, a member of the legislative budget office and a member of CDOC's budget office met at the Fremont Correctional Facility with offenders in the Modified Phase II sex offender treatment program and told offenders that the mental health budget was in review for a possible expansion of CDOC's sex offender treatment program. (See Making sense out of dollars) At issue are the state's approximately 1600 incarcerated sex offenders. Most of these inmates are backlogged in CDOC's mental health department that is underfunded and not organized to handle the flood of offenders and treatment responsibilities created by the state's Lifetime Act. According to state prison records, the number of incarcerated sex offenders increases by 200-250 inmates annually.

The dilemma now facing the state is there is not enough money in the current CDOC budget to treat offenders prior to their intended parole date and the parole board is reluctant to parole any sex offender, especially an untreated offender. The result of these policies and institutional limitations are that thousands of inmates, many nonviolent, will be incarcerated for decades past their intended release date.

As indicated by the diverging comments of the budget experts, the state could be struggling with an issue that has no good solution.

Policy Thought Experiment

Below are some policy options that those of us at the Wire came up with over coffee and Atomic Fire Balls. Please respond with comments and your own ideas ….you may just to stop the suffering.

1. Treatment Surge Policy: Increase the current $3.5 million sex offender treatment budget to $7 million and quickly (over 2 - 5 years) treat the backlog of sex offenders and place political pressure on the parole board to release those who have completed treatment and served their entire sentence. After the backlog is treated return to the original budget.

• Financial Implications: Doubles the size of CDOC mental health department's budget and staff initially costing substantially more to treat sex offenders until the backlog is reduced, then slight cost reduction to keep pace and treat the 200-250 additional sex offenders sentenced to CDOC each year. Rough (very rough) cost estimate - $7 mil x 5 yrs = $35 million. After the surge to clear the backlog, a yearly maintenance budget of $4 million to treat newly incarcerated sex offenders. The 10 year total cost: $55 mil. The current projected cost of CDOC sex offender mental health treatment (not adjusted for inflation): $35 mil.
• Political Implications: Policy unsupportable. At a time of declining state resources and when K-12 education and state social programs have seen their budgets drastically reduced, doubling the sex offender budget to help the state's most hated population would create a political firestorm.

2. Slow Venting Policy: Keep the sex offender mental health budget at current funding levels and "encourage" the mental health department to increase the yearly output of treated inmates. Pressure the parole board to release more sex offenders who meet release criteria from 5 percent (2010 rate, equals approximately 35 inmates) to 10 percent.

• Financial Implications: Slightly increases the parole department's budget, however, with so few sex offenders being paroled, the sex offender parole apparatus is currently underutilized, the effect would be minimal.
• Political Implications: Everybody, but the inmate, wins with this policy. The mental health department can boast increased through-put, doing more with less. The parole board can say they doubled the number of sex offenders released. The CDOC can realize a small savings in the cost of incarceration The policy deflates some of the civil rights issues claimed in the CDOCC lawsuit since CDOC is treating and releasing more inmates. State government can tell the media and advocacy groups they are attempting to address the issue of a backlog while maintaining public safety. The downside is that the net number of sex offenders incarcerated will increase annually by approximately 130 inmates causing a constant backlog and increase (by 5 - 10 years) the average incarceration time of someone sentenced to a two or four year sentence.

(This seems to be the current policy choice)

 3. Status Quo Policy: Keep the mental health budget at current funding levels and maintain throughput of inmates in treatment at current levels.

• Financial Implications: Increase in CDOC budget over time to accommodate the growing backlog and aging sex offender population incarcerated indefinitely.
• Political Implications: Untenable. The growing state and national advocacy for sex offender sentencing reform and shrinking state budgets will make indefinite mass incarceration uncomfortable for politicians. It will continue to be the policy of choice for the frightened masses and pushed by the media and fear mongering grief freaks like Adam Walsh.

The Wire's long term prediction is that the policy will vacillate somewhere between option two and option three depending on current government budget shortfalls and sensationalized sex offender crimes in the media. Reason and actual public safety will have no affect on this issue.

Thanks Adam, Thanks Jerry.