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.


Saturday, April 03, 2010

Colo. parole board chairman Michaud to step down - The Denver Post

Colo. parole board chairman Michaud to step down - The Denver Post

After rising from patrol cop to Denver's police chief, David Michaud might have been expected to be a throw-away-the-key type parole board chairman.

But during his three years in office, Michaud instead looked for reasons to give deserving inmates second chances.

Michaud, who has announced he will step down as of May 1, said he earnestly sought signs that inmates were ready for parole release, making sure each time to give them and their relatives their say during hearings.

"I have made an effort to change the culture of how we do the hearings," he said Friday.

As a consequence, in three years, parole release rates went from 13 percent to about 20 percent.

Before Michaud took office, inmates believed the only way to get out of a Colorado prison was to stay until their mandatory parole release date, he said.

That approach had led to a process in Colorado in which the only way to keep pace with soaring incarceration rates was to build a new $160 million prison every few years, Michaud said.

For the first time in decades, Colorado's prison incarceration rate has been receding the past 10 months, in part because of measures by the parole board and also because of steadily dropping conviction rates.

2 comments:

BigHeets said...

If this article is true, I think it was a great start...by ONE person. How many schmucks does Parole employ? Lots. Don't get me started, I know how vindictive some of these parole officers are. They truly set out to see men and women to fail. Anyway, that's a whole other subject left for another time about ethics problems that plague Colorado Parole.
My hope is they get someone with the same pro-active, pro-rehabilitation, and anti-recitivism attitude that Michaud had. This new person to take his place needs to re-train several parole officers and hearing officers, and hold his staff accountable for oiling the revolving door at DOC. Of course, lots of inmates just ask to go back by breaking the law, and rightfully so. But there's two sides to this story as well. David Michaud stands out in a large, hateful crowd.
My hopes are that this state abolishes our "Unconstitutional, Double-Jeopardy Mandatory Parole." Parole is only meant to be WITHIN a sentence, derserved by merit and good behavior alone. Mandatory parole, in my estimation accounts for approximately 50% of all inmates in our state prisons due to technicalities. This has got to end. Period.

Anonymous said...

Big Heets is right on. I have been preeching, get rid of Mandatory Parole since 2004 when i learned about it. Mandatory parole is unconstitutional penalty because the people subjected to it have never had Due Process of Law which they are entitled to