A task force charged with unclogging Denver’s jails coalesced Wednesday around a $1.7 million funding package that would create a drug court that emphasizes treatment for drug users.
The Crime Prevention and Control Commission endorsed sending the proposals to Mayor John Hickenlooper, who will make final decisions on actual spending.
Key commission members will spend the next two weeks fine-tuning the recommendations, which also would improve mental health services for inmates and bolster programs for teenagers expelled or suspended from school.
“Please understand this is nearly an emergency, and we need to act now,” said commission member Philip Cherner, an attorney who warned that growing jail populations could create a crisis.
The urgency comes from a mushrooming inmate population at Denver’s two jails, which already is approaching the planned capacity when the new $378 million justice center is completed in 2009.
On Wednesday, Denver’s jails housed 2,510 inmates in facilities designed for 1,672.
The commission’s proposals would finance six months of programs through the end of this year. Costs could escalate to $3.4 million next year to continue operating the new and expanded programs.
The commission was charged with making $1.2 million in funding recommendations to Hickenlooper, but commission members were reluctant to pare back any programs despite the budget constraint. Any additional funds will have to come from a cash-strapped budget.
“We would want to continue to work with the city to look at other funding options,” said Regina Huerter, executive director of the commission, who stressed that she believed the programs would produce significant cost savings.
In 1994, Denver created one of the nation’s first drug courts, which eventually was hailed as a national model. But the program eventually was whittled back after a schism developed among the local judiciary over the merits of the drug-court model.
In 2002, Denver’s district judges did away with the one-judge drug-court model, which emphasized drug treatment for low-level offenders. Two magistrates have continued to oversee the probation of drug offenders who are now sentenced by seven criminal court judges.
Under the new drug-court proposal, which would cost an additional $600,000 from July to the end of this year, the magistrates would have the ability to also sentence drug defendants. The funding also would create a team of public defenders, prosecutors and probation officers who would encourage defendants to complete treatment or face harsher penalties.
Loren Miller of the Denver District Court Adult Probation 2nd Judicial District Court told the commission the new drug court is expected to reduce the average time it takes a drug defendant to be sentenced from 90 days to as little as three days.
By speeding those cases through the system, the drug court is expected to free up 130 beds daily in Denver’s jails, Miller said.
The commission’s recommendations target 13 programs, including an increase in adult probation services, releasing more inmates to electronic monitoring and better assessments of the problems of inmates.
Staff writer Christopher N. Osher can be reached at 303-820-1747 or cosher@denverpost.com.
