Early Parole Warrants Audit?

Prison officials are blaming a 2-year-old policy change that ended weekend paroles for a spike in the number of inmates walking out of prison on early release.

But Republican lawmakers, concerned about the jump in discretionary paroles, aren't buying that answer.

Eight GOP legislators on the House and Senate judiciary committees have requested a state audit to investigate whether budget constraints at the Department of Corrections are influencing the number of discretionary paroles.

"This alarming increase in prison releases raises important public-safety questions that should be scrutinized in an audit," says the request sent this week to State Auditor Sally Symanski.

About 115 more inmates per month walked out of prison on early release in 2007 compared with the previous year, a trend prison officials said a month ago was the result of increased funding for programs to reduce recidivism.

Then the Department of Corrections released statistics this week showing that in a three-month period in 2007, about half of the inmates paroled early left prison only two or three days ahead of their mandatory release dates.

The reason is that in December 2005, Colorado prisons stopped letting out inmates on weekends and holidays. The change in policy was the result of private bus companies cutting off service in towns with prisons, including Cañon City. Inmates could no longer hop on a weekend bus to Denver.

Now, when an inmate's mandatory release date falls on a weekend or Monday holiday, he leaves prison the previous Friday. The department has been counting early releases of just one to three days as discretionary, boosting the state's discretionary parole numbers.

But the halt in weekend releases does not explain the hike in discretionary paroles from 2006 to 2007 — since the policy change came in 2005, lawmakers argue.

The Denver Post