DENVER—Lockdowns at the state’s prisons has risen the past year as officials deal with increased gang activity and budget cuts affecting education and other programs aimed at changing inmate behavior.
Colorado Department of Corrections Executive Director Ari Zavaras told lawmakers Monday that prisons were locked down 148 times in the 2007-2008 fiscal year, an increase of 66 times over the previous year. Assaults between inmates rose 19.5 percent while assaults by inmates on staff increased 11 percent.
Colorado houses 23,000 inmates at 22 state-run prisons, with another 11,000 inmates monitored through 18 parole offices.
“In the last eight years, the gang population increased by 85 percent while our inmate population only increased by 42 percent,” said Department of Corrections spokeswoman Katherine Sanguinetti.
More than 9,300 inmates of the total prison population of 23,000 are identified as gang members or affiliates, she said.
Disruptive inmates will be segregated within prisons before they’re sent to the new high-security Colorado State Penitentiary II, which opens next year in Canon City. Officials delayed its completion in an effort to save $17 million. Sanguinetti said violence across state prisons dropped 66 percent when the Colorado State Penitentiary opened in 1993.
Sanguinetti said programs designed to get inmates to change their behavior haven’t recovered from $56 million in budget cuts from 2001 to 2003. Of 588 positions eliminated as part of those cuts, only 80 have been restored.
She said inmates who are busy are less likely to be destructive.
“The thought of having to cut staff and do layoffs or cut any programs is absolutely something we cannot manage,” Sanguinetti said.
Such programs also help inmates receive skills and treatment needed to be able to successfully re-enter the community, she said.
Other programs that were cut include one where inmates could send photos of themselves to their families. Prisoners who work also recently had their pay slashed from several dollars a day to 60 cents, and so-called gate money—money inmates receive when they’re released—has remained unchanged at $100 since the 1970s.
In a move to save $2.7 million a year, the state also plans to close two prisons. About 192 inmates from the minimum-security prison in Rifle would be moved to other prisons or camps. The department would raise about $5.5 million from the Rifle prison’s sale.
A women’s prison in Canon City will close and the 210 inmates will be moved to other women’s prisons.
Colorado Attorney General John Suthers and other prosecutors call the closures shortsighted.
“As someone who has run the Department of Corrections, talk about closing prisons makes me nervous,” Suthers said. “Although growth of prison population has slowed, the idea that 10 years from now we’re not going to need more prison beds—I find that ludicrous.”
Added Jefferson County District Attorney Scott Storey: “People that go to prison belong there.”
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Information from: Rocky Mountain News,
