Colorado prisons turn away from heavy use of solitary confinement
The Denver Post
On paper, murderer and white supremacist
Daniel Scott Dias appears to be the type of prisoner Colorado
officials should lock up in a maximum- security prison cell and throw
away the key.
And for years, that basically was how the Colorado Department of Corrections dealt with many violent felony offenders.
But
in the past year, Dias and hundreds of other prisoners have been
transferred to lower-security lockups as part of a new systemwide
strategy that is less costly and gives inmates more educational
opportunities.
The strategy is partly based on some sobering statistics.
"Ninety-seven percent of those who are locked up will get released," DOC executive director Tom Clements said.
Of those prisoners in administrative segregation, 47 percent are released directly to the community, he said.
The
mass transfer of inmates from segregated single cells to
general-population cell blocks is one of the main reasons Colorado will
close Centennial Correctional Facility in Cañon City — its second
maximum-security prison to shutter — by 2013 and before a newly built
prison will be completely filled.
Colorado closed its first prison, Fort Lyon Correctional Facility, on March 1.
Prison
populations are declining in Colorado and nationwide after decades of
steady growth. For the first time since 1977, the total U.S. prison
population slightly decreased in 2010.
Between 2005 and 2010, the
U.S. crime rate dropped by 12 percent. In Colorado, the crime rate
dropped by 32 percent over the same period, Clements said. Violent
crimes are going down, he said.
"I think it's a very good thing," Clements said. "When the crime rate drops, people can feel a little safer."
When
it became apparent Colorado needed to close another prison because of
the state's rapidly decreasing prison population, DOC officials targeted
the most modern.
Centennial
cost $184 million to build and is the most costly to run because
inmates are kept in single cells and more staff are needed to guard
them, Clements said.
At the time Centennial was built, "it made all the sense in the world," he said.
The
number of high-risk inmates was on the rise, many with mental
illnesses. Others started riots, ran gangs or killed each other,
Clements said. The administrative-segregation numbers swelled, as total
prison numbers grew every year.
But last year, a study by national
prison experts found that Colorado was keeping prisoners in segregation
much longer than necessary.
DOC officials — including Clements —
set up a system in which officials regularly review the behavior of
inmates in administrative segregation.
Dias, who fatally stabbed
his girlfriend Rebecca Ochs, 24, in Aurora in 1995, and was also accused
of a white-supremacy murder plot, lived alone in a tiny cell at
Centennial for two years.
Dias, 42, now lives in a cellblock at
Sterling Correctional Facility where he often encourages black and
Jewish cellmates to attend religious-worship meetings with him. He is a
model prisoner.
Dias is serving a 45-year sentence on a conviction for second-degree murder. He said he decided on his own to change his life.
"I turned my life over to the Lord," he said. "I try to abide by every rule."
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