Who is the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition?

Our mission is to reverse the trend of mass incarceration in Colorado. We are a coalition of nearly 7,000 individual members and over 100 faith and community organizations who have united to stop perpetual prison expansion in Colorado through policy and sentence reform.

Our chief areas of interest include drug policy reform, women in prison, racial injustice, the impact of incarceration on children and families, the problems associated with re-entry and stopping the practice of using private prisons in our state.

If you would like to be involved please go to our website and become a member.


Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Kansas Prisons See Drop In Recidivism

If you reprioritize how the money is spent, by investing in people you are not going to have a 100% success rate but you will certainly see a return on your investment that is significant. It isn't about more money being spent. It's about money being spent better. Cost savings come in dollars out of the budget that can be spent on education, health care and other important items. The biggest return is on the amount of people who go on to have successful lives.

TOPEKA | The percentage of Kansas inmates who commit new crimes while on supervised release has dropped significantly over five years.

The rate, which was a little more than 5 percent in 2002, fell to 2.2 percent last year, Corrections Secretary Roger Werholtz told lawmakers Monday.

He attributed the reduction to increased legislative funding for programs that supervise inmates after they leave prison, and more dollars for alcohol and drug treatment.

Werholtz said that with fewer offenders returning to prison, the number of inmates in Kansas prisons has decreased from 9,153 in 2004 to 8,854 in mid-2007.

“There is sufficient (prison) capacity to meet our needs for the next 10 years,” Werholtz told the House Appropriations Committee.

However, he said that prediction assumed that the Legislature would not pass new sentencing laws that would put more offenders in prison.....


Kansas Star

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The Colorado legislature and Governor only pay lip service to this concept, while building new prisons to keep the prison, judicial and corrections industries in full capacity. The committees only look at cost per bed, suck it up, and hear Ari Zavaras say that he plans to spend 1/2 BILLION dollars on new prisons in the next 10 years, in sharp contrast to our neighbors to the east?