Should Denver build a new jail?
Re: “To jail or not to jail,” April 24 Perspective articles.
There is absolutely no way everyone will be satisfied with any proposal for a new Denver justice center, regardless of the proposal. However, significant community time, energy and thought went into the current proposal, which is Referendum 1A on Tuesday’s ballot.
Until Feb. 23, I also was an unbeliever and had serious concerns about the new Denver justice center proposal. My concerns mirrored many of those voiced by its opposition. So I took the opportunity to tour and see firsthand the existing three facilities and their concerns.
What I saw was: facilities full of primarily young, minority men with an average age of 24; men crammed together in very close and inhumane quarters; men having no opportunity for any training programs due to lack of room and money; antiquated, obsolete and unsafe facilities; dormitories designed for 32 men and housing 80; and potentially unsafe transport of prisoners and jeopardy to sheriff’s deputies by prisoners mingling with visitors in the courthouse hallways.
Is Referendum 1A perfect? Probably not. I personally feel more money needs to be spent on rehabilitation, retraining and diversion programs. However, a “yes” vote by Denver’s citizens is the right thing to do.
Michele M. Lawonn, Denver
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It seems to me that spending $378 million to build a jail to house 2,022 prisoners (the average number in Denver’s system) is a tad excessive. That is almost $200,000 per prisoner.
Perhaps we could just put the prisoners in the proposed housing development at the end of the runways at Denver International Airport. At four prisoners in each $400,000 house, we could get by for only $200 million, saving the city half of the cost.
But I suppose, in a few years, someone will be complaining that the noise is inhumane.
Ted Longman, Golden
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The yard signs encouraging a “yes” vote on the new jail say “No Tax Increase,” as have the recorded messages I receive from the mayor. However, the wording I am being asked to vote on reads, in part, “Shall the City and County debt be increased by not more than $378,000,000 principal … and shall property taxes be increased by an estimated $17,328,000 … to pay such debt?”
Unless Orwell’s Newspeak is the new official language of the mayor and the jail supporters, it appears the yard signs are in error, or we citizens are being deceived.
When a tax increase is justified, I am willing to pay taxes for public works and services – taxes make it possible for a community to have water, sewer, roads, libraries, etc. I am willing to pay more taxes to improve and renovate the existing jail. But I am not willing to vote for a tax increase to pay debt of almost $600 million, after interest, when I am being deceived.
For me, there are many other reasons why the new jail is not good management of public funds, but the reason that rankles me most and insults my intelligence is the deception.
Elaine Granata, Denver
Editor’s note: If voters pass Referendum 1A, overall taxes will not increase, as the city will extend the use of existing bond authority.
I am a prosecutor, having worked in the Denver County courts for more than 15 years. I have a number of reasons to support the new justice center. Here are just a few:
1. The Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, one of the main opponents of the new jail, is a consortium of organizations seeking taxpayers’ money for supplying “alternative sentencing” such as alcohol and drug counseling. They have a financial incentive to keep the jail space in short supply to force more funds to be allocated for them; therefore, their position is biased.
2. A more safely designed court facility is needed, not just new paint. Emotions run high in courts, as in-custody suspects, rival gang members, victims, and their families all are present in the same hallways, along with jurors, witnesses and the general public. This results in dangerous conditions in both the courtrooms and the hallways.
3. Denver deserves a facility with the best environment for justice. Denver should have safe, modern and impressive courtrooms, where the work of the justice system can both earn and receive the respect it deserves. Also, jurors deserve better deliberation rooms that don’t compel them to make rash decisions just to escape.
Kory A. Nelson, Highlands Ranch
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Re: “Tough crowd crams jail,” April 24 news story.
According to The Denver Post, Denver’s jail population consists of 72 percent black or Hispanic detainees. The Post also points out that a majority of detainees are made up of non-violent offenders, and of these a full 40 percent of these people are incarcerated for non-violent drug laws.
I don’t think we need a new jail. Instead, I think society needs a new brain to figure out why it’s not a good use of money to keep building bigger cages to throw people into for problems we are lazy to figure out, and are caused by economic hardship, social inequality, and/or personal misfortune – permanently treatable only by compassion, intelligence and fairness.
Neil Slade, Denver
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Disappearance of small towns in rural America
Re: “Rural America battles an exodus,” April 24 news story.
After retiring some years ago, my in- laws moved from Arvada to a tiny, northeastern Colorado farming town hoping, I suppose, to recapture something of their pre-World War II life, growing up in Montana. They hit the road again after only a few years, unable to deal with the insular, clannish, suspicious and unfriendly reception they’d encountered in a place where the local Andy, Barney and Aunt Bea seemed to have stepped out of a Stephen King novel.
While small-town managers and civic- minded souls in these places may desperately want to enhance the image of their dying towns and attract new young residents, the reality is that outsiders with no roots in these places are rarely welcome. High-falutin’ “rich” folk (like my father-in-law, retired from the U.S. Postal Service) showing up in their fancy city cars, even less so. If you want to live in a place where the locals stop talking when you enter the corner caf , meet you on the street not with a tip of the John Deere cap but an icy glare, and where you’re actually told right to your face that “you don’t have family here; you don’t belong here,” then perhaps one of these small towns is the place for you. But if you go there, don’t go looking for Mayberry. You’re not going to find it.
Troy, Sparta, Babylon. These were all great cities that eventually outlived their usefulness, were bypassed by the rest of the world and disappeared. Why should tiny farming towns on America’s Great Plains fare any better? Changing agricultural methods and needs have made many of these little towns obsolete. It may be time to face the facts that our small towns never were and never could live up to our nostalgia and that some places not only should but actually deserve to disappear.
J.M. Schell, Arvada
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A generation of debt
Re: “We are the generation of debt; Unfunded liabilities could total $74 trillion,” April 24 Richard D. Lamm Perspective article.
It is about time someone recognized how we are failing our children.
Why is the media so silent about this looming crisis?
Why is the only solution to the homeless problem more public housing?
Why is the only solution to Denver’s aging jail an expensive new jail with no consideration to why Denver faces a growing crime problem?
Why, when every option is supposed to be on the table to fix Social Security, isn’t the option to phase Social Security out of existence on the table?
Why is it that the only solution to America’s health care needs is for government to provide for our needs? I thought this was America, where people were free and expected to bear responsibility for their own needs.
Why is the only solution to mediocre public education more money for another failed program?
We treat people like helpless dolts and then can’t understand why they behave like helpless parasites. We teach our children to live as obedient servants of society and then can’t understand why we suffer growing drug abuse, crime and poverty.
We want our cake and we expect our children and grand- children to pay for it. America faces a moral crisis. It started with FDR and has grown worse ever since. There is no excuse or justification for such irresponsible behavior. It is the citizens of my generation (being misled by Republicans and Democrats) who are destroying freedom in America. History will record it was during the 20th century that we betrayed the ideals set forth by our Founding Fathers, and in the 21st century that we suffer the consequences.
John Zaugg, Denver
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Former Gov. Richard D. Lamm’s grand rebuke of an entire generation as thieves of their children’s future makes sense – in that crabby, guilt- producing blame-the-victim sort of way we’ve come to expect from him.
Who, after all, produced the national debt? The wage-enslaved working people who have virtually no say in what or how much will be taken from their paychecks to fund programs like Social Security? No, it’s the governors, the congressmembers, the big-money corporate lobbyists, the influence peddlers and opinion manufacturers who force decisions – like borrowing hundreds of billions for a war to control the oil under somebody else’s land – who create the national debt. And please don’t tell me that touching the screen on a corporate-controlled voting machine every couple of years makes me as culpable in the destruction of this country as the thieves who run our government like a fly-by-night penny-stock outfit.
As long as profit-making is unquestioningly accepted as the organizing principle of this society, myopic selfishness will rule, and the bonds of community will continue to atrophy. No, Mr. Lamm, if ordinary folk of the adult generation are to be blamed for the staggering federal debt, it’ll be for our failure to recognize that social, environmental and economic justice always take a back seat to profit-grubbing in a system run by and for those who can easily blame the victims when their schemes fall apart.
Bruce McNaughton, Denver
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Fort Collins housing battle
Re: “Affordable-housing fight brews off CSU campus; Students feeling the rental squeeze,” April 24 business news story.
The Post’s article on the lack of off- campus housing for Colorado State University students stated that “Fort Collins residents seek to enforce a 1964 law limiting the number of unrelated occupants.” This is true, but it does not point out that we are trying to do this in neighborhoods zoned for “single families.” The article went on to say, “They are pushing for enforcement of a 41-year-old, little-used ordinance that limits rental homes to three unrelated people.”
Unlike similar university communities around the U.S., Fort Collins has resisted implementation of the law because it would mean more work for them. I know because I’ve been one of those neighbors who has tried for 25 years to get the city to enforce its law at even the most minimal level when we have had problem rentals in our neighborhood.
And claims by CSU student government representatives that the current zoning ordinance is “discriminatory” and “unconstitutional” are both untrue. Such zoning codes have been determined to be legal and they are not any more discriminatory than any other cost-based system in our free-market economy. Virtually every community in the state and the nation has a definition of what constitutes a single family, and our homes were purchased in neighborhoods zoned single-family residential. Landlords are now trying to turn our neighborhood homes into slums of boarding houses that violate the law and don’t even meet the simple requirements of a home-based business.
Martha Denney, Fort Collins
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Teen driving laws
Re: “Stricter laws for teenage drivers,” April 27 Open Forum.
Gov. Bill Owens and the Colorado legislature should prevent kids from getting licenses until they’re 18 years old. This would be the easiest solution to the teenage driving problem. The driving age in most countries in Europe is 18. They know something we Americans are afraid to admit: Most teenagers are not ready to drive until they’re out of high school.
The argument that kids need a car to go to work is empty and circular. Kids need to work to pay for the car; but without a car they won’t need to work. Without a car, kids would also get more exercise from walking or riding bikes.
The grief that parents and legislators would suffer if this happened would last only a couple of years. By that time, preteens of today would forget the empty promises of teen driving.
I think the thousands of teen lives saved nationwide would be worth much more than the perceived loss of freedom.
Jan Krankota, Arvada
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State’s felony murder law
Re: “Should state’s felony murder law be revised? NO: Sentences warranted,” April 17 Perspective article.
State Sen. Dan Grossman’s position on felony murder is fairly sound, from a legislative perspective. It is when he shifts to a judicial perspective that his arguments vacillate. He advocates for fullest culpability (first-degree murder) in all instances of death during a predicate felony – that is, full application of the first-degree murder statute in its current form – yet relies on prosecutorial discretion in his conclusion. This argument fails not only because prosecutors are notorious in their lack of discretion, but also because there is only the either-or option of charging for first-degree murder or not.
Murder is characterized in three felony levels and homicide in two for a good reason: to give prosecutors options. Grossman takes this privilege himself by stating that the people benefit from felony murder statute by laying responsibility for homicide appropriately at the feet of those who may not have cause caused death, euphemistically using the term “homicide,” which a seasoned legislator knows is not synonymous with “murder.”
If he is serious about responsibility, he will give prosecutors the authority to characterize a felony-related killing, as he has taken liberty to do in his conclusion.
Jason Pecci, Canon City
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To the point
On Earth Day, I read with dismay that Congress had passed the flawed energy bill, which gives incentives to the highest-polluting energy industries and contains the unthinkable liability protection for MTBE producers. It seems clear that the majority of Congress hold the state of our nation’s environment in very low regard by supporting this legislation.
Dan Edstrom, Denver
While I commend the new law requiring limits on passengers for young drivers, I cannot help but wonder how police officers will be able to enforce it. How can someone tell if you are a new driver or not, unless they have pulled you over and checked your license?
Maxine Kelley, Parker
Regarding the proposal to ban smoking in Colorado, why let the legislature make this determination? Put it on the ballot and let the people of Colorado speak to the issue.
Vern Stewart, Lakewood
The Post’s “Dispatches from Iraq” series is a reminder that these are our sons and daughters, spouses, parents and friends who are putting their lives on the line and that the sons and daughters, spouses, parents and friends of the enemy are doing the same.
David Krest, Lafayette
We need not only freedom of religion but also freedom from religion forced on us by the “true believers.” They want religion in the government so they can force their ideology on the rest of us. There are countless historical examples of government religious leaders tyrannizing and enslaving people in the name of their religion and their God.
Keith Campbell, Denver
It’s not the price of the oil creating the impact on our gasoline prices. It is the big oil companies that have not built a new refinery in 25 years, hoping for some lessening of environmental rules. It’s the greed, profit and lack of concern for the general public’s health, folks.
Steven Wells, Longmont
