Truth In Numbers

Daily Camera

The governor was a longtime prosecutor, so we don`t believe his critics that he`s a soft-on-crime leader willing to trade public safety for a few million bucks.

And Gov. Bill Ritter`s plan to cut about $19 million in costs -- to help chip away at a $320 budget shortfall -- by releasing certain prisoners early didn`t sound like a bad idea at first.

Only prisoners who were six months away from release would be eligible, and ex-prisoners to be released from parole would have had to have served, without conflict, six months on parole or half of their parole sentence to be expedited.

Colorado has more than 23,000 inmates in state prisons, nearly double the number from 10 years ago. It costs about $25,000 to house one inmate for one year in a state prison, according to the state.

The Colorado Department of Corrections had reported about 3,400 prisoners would be eligible. But in what has been understated as an "underreporting," it turns out that 6,400 could be released up to six months early. According to a review of records by the Denver Post, 478 of those to be considered for release in the first year of the program are violent offenders, including people convicted of murder, manslaughter, kidnapping and child abuse.

Suddenly, the cost savings doesn`t sound that great after all.

The long and short of the plan is that a parole board will have the final say on whether convicts can leave prison, and the governor`s office has said it won`t be applied to kidnappers, sex offenders or people who will jeopardize public safety.

So what are we facing?

The state says Colorado`s recidivism rate, defined as released convicts returning to prison within three years, is 53.4 percent. At $25,000 a year per head, that`s not a very good investment. Some of these return to jail for less-serious "technical" violations like not meeting the terms of their parole.

But a lot of them in Colorado -- particularly the mentally ill and people whose convictions included drug violations -- simply aren`t getting rehabilitated in prison. The culture clash in state and federal prisons between punishment and rehabilitation isn`t serving the citizenry or municipal budgets well.

At the federal level, allegations of sexual abuse of inmates by staff members -- those who should be charged with keeping the institutions safe, orderly places of punishment, and yes, rehabilitation -- more than doubled from 2001 to 2008. And allegations were present in all but one of 93 federal prisons, with Colorado`s Supermax in Florence having the most. And 92 percent of those prosecuted wind up with a guilty plea or conviction.

This small chunk of a big budget gap may seem necessary for the state right now, but for major savings down the road, more work needs to be done to address recidivism in the state and nationwide. And meaningful prison reform -- protecting prisoners from abuse and focusing on rehabilitation instead -- is a good place to start.