Death More Likely Than Parole for Sex Offenders Says New CDOC 5-year Report

The Colorado Department of Corrections annual Lifetime Supervision Act report was released this month showing sobering statistics for a policy many call a total failure.

The report is produced annually to correspond with the state's legislative session and gives lawmakers a snapshot of the statutes progress. This year's report provides data from FY 2007 - 2011.   According to the numbers the runaway growth of Lifetime Act pensioners has overwhelmed the system causing longer waits for treatment and longer prison terms than the courts and legislature intended. As of FY 2011 over 1,700 inmates have been sentenced to CDOC under the Lifetime Act, a 33.9 percent increase in Lifetime Act sentences since 2007. (See Table 1) While many are coming to prison under the Lifetime Act, few are leaving. On average 150 new Lifetime inmates come to , prison each year, while only 12.8 Lifetime inmates are paroled.

(See Table 2 & 3) The 5-year parole average for those who were eligible was 2.2 percent. Fiscal year 2008 was the worst year with only 0.7 percent paroled and 2010 was the best with 5 percent paroled.

Many parole advocates and CDOC therapists thought 2011 would be a good year for paroling those eligible, but the report shows that paroles actually decreased to 2.1 percent in 2011, this equates to only 18 inmates released during the fiscal year - a 50 percent decrease from the previous year. Sadly, the rate of death while incarcerated was higher for this population than the rate of parole for three of the five years reported.

The low parole rates have led to over 700 inmates kept past their intended release date, a 35.5 percent increase from 2008.

At the time the report was run CDC's backlogged and underhanded mental health department could only provide required treatment for. half of those eligible. Those not able to get into court ordered treatment will languish for years past their intended release date waiting for a rare slot into the treatment program.

The report shows that the CDOC is in an unsustainable trajectory when it comes to managing the growing Lifetime population. In the past five years CDOC has spent over $9.7 million for sex offender treatment and growing the treatment capacity within the mental health department. During this expensive expansion treatment capacity grew by only 12.7 percent, while Lifetime Act inmates requiring treatment grew by 33.9 percent.

At this rate the number incarcerated and needing treatment will more than double in five years.

Since the release of the annual report there has been a slight uptick in the number of Lifetime Act inmates paroled by   Gov. John Hickenlooper's new parole board. But the parole rate should have to be 10 times the rate of previous years to begin to have a positive impact on this forgotten, mostly nonviolent, population. Unfortunately, the politically appointed parole board members are unlikely to release large numbers of a population society has been taught to fear more than terrorists - even though this population has the lowest recidivism rate once released from prison.

Many advocates, including some judges and prosecutorsr believe there will not be real change or relief for these inmates, many incarcerated decades longer than courts intended, until the Lifetime Act is repealed.

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In the January 30, 2012 issue of The New Yorker critic at large Adam Gopnik writes a thoughtful piece on America's love of incarceration. The article is titled, "The Caging of America Why do we lock up so many people?" Below are a few quotes from the article, go out and buy the magazine and read the whole article it is worth the price of a Starbucks Latte...trust me.

''Mass incarceration on a scale almost unexampled in human history is a fundamental fact of our country today - perhaps the fundamental fact, as slavery was the fundamental fact of 1850."            

''Over all, there are now more people under 'correctional supervision' in America - more than six million - than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height."

"In the past two decades, the money that states spend on prisons has risen at six times the rate of spending on higher education."

"The scale and brutality of our prisons are the moral scandal of American life. Every day, at least fifty thousand men - a full house at Yankee Stadium - wake in solitary confinement."

Almost half of Denver's children drop out of school says latest numbers According to the Denver Post, despite a 4 percent increase, DPS still only graduates 56 percent of its students. This rate is well below both the state and national average.