Habitual Offenders Test System

GRAND JUNCTION — Carlos Eldon Alcon is a one-man petty-crime wave.

Since 1975, when he was a 12-year- old busted for shoplifting and underage drinking, Alcon has been arrested more than 90 times.

He pulled his pants down in the women's clothing section of a retail store. He smoked marijuana in a park. He refused to leave a bar where he was eighty-sixed. He had sex in broad daylight in downtown Grand Junction. Ten times he failed to show up for court hearings.

He's what one officer terms "a full-service offender."

He is also one of the under-the-radar problems Gov. Bill Ritter's new criminal justice task force faces as it looks at sentencing laws and the problem of repeat offenders.

Criminals like Alcon often fall outside the cross hairs of busy prosecutors. And no one knows how many are out there. There is no database to set off alarm bells when arrests creep into high numbers.

These misdemeanor offenses, sometimes referred to as "nuisance crimes," slide under a line - the serious felony cutoff - that imprisons other repeaters for lengthy sentences.

But they add up to a huge, and expensive, problem.

"On the low end (of crimes), an individual gets arrested, pleads guilty, gets credit for time in jail, and out they go," said Kathy Sasak, deputy executive director of the Colorado Department of Public Safety.

"It's a sad commentary but a reality of the system. They keep going through the sieve."

For many, the pattern involves repeated bad habits. After release, they dive into alcohol or drugs, shoplift, trespass, violate restraining orders, blow off court dates or violate probation and end up back in the booking room - sometimes within days.

They eventually might do brief prison stints but get little or no counseling or addiction treatment. The waiting list for such prison programs is often too lengthy for those who will be there less than two years.

Alcon's rap sheet fits the mold. It is long on mostly misdemeanor offenses. His few felonies are bumbled drunken crimes that include attempting to rob someone while wielding a pair of scissors and trespassing in a family's home by stumbling in and passing out on their couch.

But his case is complicated. He's never, by his own admission, been sober when the cuffs were snapped on his wrists. In each case, the wheels of justice keep spinning at the same costly speed.

Alcon, 44, has been arrested by the Grand Junction Police Department 61 times since 1999. He has spent 747 days in the Mesa County Jail at a cost of $52.40 per day. He has served three sentences in the youth corrections system and three, totaling less than six years, in the state Department of Corrections. He has had 17 court cases filed against him by the Mesa County district attorney's office since 2000. Those cases have racked up as many as 20 hearings each before a judge.

Alcon has been represented at taxpayer expense by the Colorado public defender's office in all the cases that have gone to court.

It is impossible to add up the impact, said Mesa County District Attorney Pete Hautzinger.

Hautzinger is a member of the new Colorado Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice. He calls Alcon's situation "a fascinating case study that capsulates many of the issues" the task force will be examining.

Breaking the cycle

As the commission investigates how the state should balance the need to punish and treat criminals, cases like Alcon's could help determine where and what kind of intervention can help break the recidivism cycle.

Simply jailing habitual petty criminals like Alcon, who are not violent offenders, creates a dilemma for law enforcement.

"We in law enforcement will take a ton of criticism if we use the tools we have and try to lock them up for 30 years," Hautzinger said. "They (the public) will say it's a waste of prison space."

Officials in various law enforcement agencies agree. "At times there really is nothing for these multiple, multiple offenders," said Mesa County Judge Craig Henderson. "You can throw all of the stuff in your toolbox at them, and until they are ready to change, they are not going to change."

Nearly all say that the lack of a database tracking numbers of repeat offenses makes it impossible to know how many Carlos Alcons there are in the state.

"It's not particularly an uncommon phenomenon. It's more typical in municipal courts," Sasak said.

Sasak points out that "some very good things are happening in Colorado," with a few jurisdictions taking quick post- court steps to lessen recidivism.

The city of Denver's Court to Community program hooks up repeat offenders with mental health and homeless services. Jefferson County has been training officers to identify mental health and substance- abuse issues, and Denver has made a commitment to similarly train 500 officers.

In spite of those efforts, Sasak said there is still "an overwhelming need" for mental health and substance-abuse programs. Judges second that. The lack of such programs goes back to sentencing-law changes in 1984. Increased penalties were mandated for some crimes, but treatment programs weren't.

The state is attempting, through "re-entry" programs in communities to lower the half of inmates who end up back in prison within three years of release, said Jeaneene Miller, director of adult parole, community corrections and youthful offender systems for the Colorado Department of Corrections.

All inmates, on release, are enrolled in some program, she said, usually dealing with substance-abuse, mental health or sexual offenses.

Mesa County Sheriff Stan Hilkey said he is trying similar programs locally but hasn't been able to cover all types of crime.

"It's very frustrating for us. We've applied for a grant to do a transitional program for this very kind of thing," Hilkey said.

System "screwed up"

Alcon, who agreed to be interviewed when he recently went a month between arrests, said he doesn't feel that he has ever received any help along with his time behind bars - something Miller said she finds hard to believe.

"I think the judicial system is really screwed up. You have a person with a problem, and you send him to jail or prison and he gets no help, and he comes out the same or worse," Alcon said. "Why don't they just call it what it is - the department of warehousing?"

Alcon termed his alcohol problem "terrible" and said he has had that problem since shortly after his parents divorced and he moved to Grand Junction from Durango when he was 10 years old. He blacks out and can't remember his crimes. He wakes up in a detox unit or the jail drunk tank and said he has to ask what he's in for.

He knows the drill. In detox he will be back on the street as soon as he can "blow zeroes" in a device that measures blood- alcohol levels. In jail, he said they hand him a broom and put him to work, knowing he is a model prisoner when sober.

His mother, Mary Gonzales, said Carlos has told her at times that he has everything he needs in jail and is too used to the government taking care of him.

When he is out of jail, he sometimes lives as a transient.

Gonzales and other family members have tried to get him into treatment but have been told by law enforcement and social service officials that he must seek help voluntarily.

The law-abiding and deeply religious part of his family fears Alcon will end up like two uncles with severe drinking problems who died in prison.

Alcon said he has the same fear.

"I don't want that to happen to me," he said recently when he had gone for weeks without drinking, had a job and was living with a girlfriend, a former counselor from the detox unit.

"I think I can make it this time," he said.

Two days later he was arrested on charges of smoking marijuana and violating a restraining order. Two weeks later he was arrested again on a failure- to-appear warrant.

He is scheduled for a sentencing hearing next week for criminal trespass and having at least three indecent exposures. He also has seven pending misdemeanor cases that haven't been resolved.

Hautzinger said he plans to ask for prison time - as much as nine years this time around.

Alcon said he doesn't expect that sentence to end his crime spree.

"Without help," he said, "I will probably do the same things again."

The Denver Post