From his cell in Cañon City, Jeff Beebe takes issue with my recent claim that “you’ve got to work hard to get sent to a Colorado prison.” Not so fast, he wrote in a letter to me. “If only I were so lucky to have truly earned this extended stay in hell.”
“In 2000 I was arrested in Jefferson County,” Beebe explained, “in an Internet sting where I communicated with what I thought was an underage girl for a period of three months . . . only to find out there was no ‘her!’ Only the police were there that day to meet me and I ended up accepting a ‘deal’ to a three-to-life indeterminate sentence which was sold to me as ‘You’ll do three years in prison and then get out and be on parole.’ Nine years later I am still in prison.”
It’s not every day that someone recounts so matter-of-factly his attempt to entice a girl under 15 for sex; my immediate reaction was to toss his letter. But it occurred to me that maybe Beebe was an exception to my description of the Colorado inmate population. I’d contended, based on data provided by Attorney General John Suthers, that “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.”
Beebe hadn’t actually had sex with a minor, it seems. “Is my talking dirty on the Internet violent?” he asked. “Hardly. Immoral, sure, but not violent.” Meanwhile, nine years and counting is quite a stint for a fellow who claims he doesn’t have “anything close” to an extensive felony record.
Surely, not everyone picked up in a similar sting operation goes to prison for so long.
The Jefferson County district attorney’s office has long boasted one of the most active Internet sex offender units anywhere in the country, with more than 80 arrests last year alone. According to Jeffco DA spokeswoman Pam Russell, most of the men, after a thorough evaluation, end up on probation, not in prison (although a few do in fact land there). So what accounts for Beebe’s predicament?
Well, maybe it has to do with something else he mentioned in his letter — a prior incident of menacing some years earlier. And maybe it also has to do with something Beebe neglected to tell me: At the time of his Jeffco arrest, he had a case pending in Larimer County over charges of enticing a child and contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Just weeks after his Jeffco conviction, in fact, he was sentenced to 10 years- to-lifetime probation on the one charge in Larimer and to six years in prison for the other.
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children apparently had contacted Larimer officials, Russell reports, over concerns that Beebe seemed to be trolling for children on the Internet.
In other words, maybe Beebe continues to languish in prison not because, as he would have it, of a “very conservative parole board,” but because his record offers evidence of a persistent predator. “We do believe every time we go online and make an arrest we have prevented another victim,” Russell says.
Beebe insists he didn’t have to work “all that hard at getting in here. It was damn easy.” Easy for him, maybe — but with his multiple offenses, he still fits Suthers’ profile of the typical Colorado prisoner. Choirboys need not apply.
As we enter an era of sentencing reform because of bulging prisons and exploding costs, it may well be that guys like Beebe won’t spend as much — or any — time in prison. Whether that will be a victory for justice, as my correspondent insists, is quite another matter.
E-mail Vincent Carroll at vcarroll@denverpost.com.
