Colorado may have to return part of the $4.5 million in U.S. Justice Department grants it has received in the past six years after failing to fully implement a sexually violent predator law, according to federal officials.
While the federal government didn’t say whether it plans to investigate Colorado’s program, state officials have acknowledged they did not review the cases of up to 1,200 sex offenders to see if they should be labeled as sexually violent predators.
Pete Pierce, deputy director of the Justice Department’s Office of Justice Programs, said states that obtain grants based on false information could face civil action under the False Claims Act to repay the money.
“The Department of Justice expects that states will follow the laws they enact with respect to sex-offender registration and notification,” Pierce said in a written response to questions from The Denver Post concerning the state’s compliance with federal regulations.
But Lance Clem, spokesman for the state Department of Public Safety, said Colorado has met federal reporting requirements every year.
He said federal monitors check only whether Colorado passed a suitable sexually violent predator law and related statutes, not whether the state is actually applying the laws.
“Once we proved we met the mandate (by passing an SVP law and related laws), there was no further oversight,” Clem said.
Not according to Pierce.
Every year, officials from states must report they are in compliance with grant conditions, which means they have implemented their laws, he said, and state officials who give false or fraudulent information to qualify could be subject to criminal prosecution.
Furthermore, although Colorado’s sexually violent predator law required the Department of Corrections to evaluate most sex offenders before they appeared at parole hearings, the agency never got any of the federal grant money to pay therapists to do the evaluations.
The Justice Department sends the grant money to the state’s justice department. The money, state officials said, went to other law enforcement initiatives, including drug courts, drug task forces, police communications systems, school resource officers and drug treatment programs, Clem said. The spending was appropriate under terms of the grant, he added.
“If we received grant money based on doing SVP evaluations, we would have done the evaluations,” said Patti Micciche, Department of Corrections spokeswoman. “I’m not shifting blame here. We owned up that it was an oversight on our part.”
In May, The Post reported that the Department of Corrections had not set up a system for doing sexually violent predator tests and had not given a single test to any rapists or child molesters in six years.
Probation officers, who did a fraction of the tests required, had either failed to do 1,200 tests or don’t have records of doing the tests.
Even so, Clem said Colorado had passed a set of criteria for determining which sex offenders should be labeled as predators, evaluations had been completed and offenders had been labeled as sexually violent predators.
Six years after Colorado’s sexually violent predator law went into effect, only two sex offenders outside of jail had been labeled as sexually violent predators, even though The Post found that more than 1,300 met the initial criteria.
In some cases, judges decided a sex offender didn’t meet the state’s criteria, said Jeanne Smith, deputy Colorado attorney general. But that information never made it into court records, she said, adding that the state is finding many sex offenders don’t meet the criteria.
Once designated a sexually violent predator, local authorities can notify neighbors directly about the sex offender and his background and hold community meetings.
Following The Post’s report, Gov. Bill Owens created the Governor’s Task Force on Sexually Violent Predators. The task force has asked the Department of Corrections and the probation division to review all of the cases of sex offenders that were missed.
To qualify for the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant, states had to pass laws protecting people from sex offenders, including one creating sex-offender registration and one for dealing with sexually violent predators, Pierce said.
Even if Colorado is not required to return part of the grant money, it is no cause for celebration, said House Speaker Andrew Romanoff, D-Denver.
“These are all tax dollars,” said Romanoff, who held hearings on the issue.
“I don’t think we should look the other way and breathe a sigh of relief we put one by on the federal government.”
Staff writer Kirk Mitchell can be reached at 303-820-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com.
