Here’s what fans of reduced prison sentences will tell you: Three-fourths of Colorado’s inmates were convicted for non-violent crimes and nearly one-fourth are behind bars because of drug offenses.
Now, here’s what fans of reduced sentences won’t tell you: “About 75 percent [of inmates] were in prison for a violent offense, had committed a violent offense in the past, or were charged with a violent offense before plea bargaining to a nonviolent offense. The quarter of inmates who could truly be considered nonviolent offenders . . . averaged almost three prior felonies apiece. A significant percentage of these nonviolent offenders hadn’t been sentenced to prison initially for their current offense, but had failed on probation or community corrections.”
That quotation appears in Attorney General John Suthers’ 2008 book “No Higher Calling, No Greater Responsibility,” where he describes what he discovered in the late 1990s while director of state corrections. There is no reason to believe the inmate profile has changed dramatically in the decade since.
You’ve got to work hard to get sent to a Colorado prison. You’ve got to be either a violent criminal or a multiple offender — and often a multiple offender who won’t comply with rules that would have kept you free even after conviction.
If Colorado is locking up choir boys who merely get caught with an ounce or two of dope, Suthers couldn’t find them.
None of this means that Senate Bill 286, a sentencing reform plan introduced this week, is misguided in every respect (although it is badly misguided in some). But it does mean we should be wary of claims, such as those on display at a Capitol press conference Wednesday, that the lock-’em-up mentality of the past 20-some years amounts to a draconian experiment with little payback or rationale.
How’s this for payback: Colorado’s violent crime rate peaked in 1992 at 579 per 100,000 residents and has since dropped by more than one-third. The state’s property crime rate actually peaked earlier — in the early 1980s — but has also plummeted. Bulging prisons aren’t the only reason for these trends, but they’re clearly part of the explanation.
SB 286, sponsored by Sen. John Morse, D-Colorado Springs, and Rep. Claire Levy, D-Boulder, retains the same sentences for most serious violent crimes but tweaks or significantly revises downward nearly all other penalties. Some pretty bad actors will be pleased with the result.
The bill’s most striking flaw, though, may be the way it cheapens the importance of property crimes. Consider how “habitual offenders” would be treated — those who currently face a major bump in their sentences after they’ve been convicted of a third felony within 10 years. Under the reform proposal, only thugs convicted of three violent crimes within a decade would face the extra time. So prosecutors would be powerless to lower the boom on an unremorseful thief who hits scores of homes over a period of years and gets caught time after time. What sense does that make?
So determined are the bill’s sponsors to reduce the prison population that they even bar courts from ordering criminals to prison for probation violations unless they commit a new crime. So how will the courts get them to toe the line on probation rules?
Look, even lock-’em-up types — or the reasonable ones — realize that the rapid growth of the corrections budget isn’t sustainable. Lawmakers are going to have to give judges more discretion, trim the upper limit on sentences for some crimes and divert a greater proportion of the less-dangerous nonviolent offenders into alternatives to prison. SB 286’s backers will argue that’s all it does — but the bill’s details belie the rhetoric.
E-mail Vincent Carroll at vcarroll@denverpost.com
