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September 17, 2009 04:51 PM UTC

Conservative Gazette Stoutly Defends Ritter's Prisoner Reduction Plan

  • 13 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

Today’s must-read from one of the most ardently conservative editorial boards in the state:

Seldom do Republicans clamor for more state spending, and more government bureaucracy, in opposition to Democrats. That’s exactly what’s happening in Colorado, however, as leading Republicans blast Democrat Gov. Bill Ritter for his proposal to save money by shrinking the prison population.

GOP gubernatorial candidate Josh Penry called the governor’s plan “Ill-conceived and reckless.” Colorado Attorney General John Suthers said the plan “will seriously compromise public safety.”

Colorado, like the rest of the country, has been on a foolish incarceration spending spree for years. Our state’s bloated prison bureaucracy has contributed to this country’s dubious distinction as having the largest prison population in the world – even larger than the prison population of China, which has more than four times the general population of the United States…

The governor’s plan resulted from recommendations of the Colorado Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice. The bipartisan committee, comprised of people from a cross section of the state’s criminal justice system, recommended the early release of prisoners who comport with a strict standard of criteria, after studying data that showed the plan was unlikely to increase recidivism. Any prisoner meeting an assortment of behavioral guidelines would also have to be within six months of release from prison to qualify. That means nothing in this plan would result in an inmate receiving a substantial reduction in prison time. Even the Colorado Association of Chiefs of Police supports the plan. The vast majority of convicts eligible for this slightly-early release program are nonviolent offenders, though a small percentage are murderers, sex offenders and robbers who have served most of their time.

Convicted felons are freedom-robbing scum who deserve no sympathy. Government should punish them and try to prevent them from causing more harm. The governor, the commission, and the police chiefs’ association aren’t trying to move our state in a soft-on-crime direction. Instead, they are trying to move Colorado in a direction that is realistic and fiscally responsible, given the condition of the economy.

The Pueblo Chieftain reported yesterday that these are all inmates eligible for parole–and at least 20% of them won’t get approved. The recent flare-up on this seems to be the result of an excitable Denver Post reporter who apparently didn’t understand that thousands of people are released from jail every year, budget crisis or no budget crisis, and decided to lump inmates due for release in the next few months anyway into a breathless story about the DOC “under-reporting” the number involved. In reality, all it means is a lot of those people due for release anyway will go through this pilot program intended to save money–what’s so “ill-conceived and reckless” about that?

Right, upcoming election. At some point the grownups will be able to discuss this we guess.

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13 thoughts on “Conservative Gazette Stoutly Defends Ritter’s Prisoner Reduction Plan”

  1. Sounds Stalinesque to me.

    Prison is college for criminals.

    Networkng takes place.

    If no one will give a felon a job when ho or she gets out, then few options remain to sustain life, or change behavior.

    The DOC is big business in this country. Private prisons run for profit sound like  labor camps.

    The whole system needs revamping.  

    1. Private prisons have incentives to PROMOTE recidivism, its what drives their growth.

      The unemployability of felons and chemical addiction are probably the 2 greatest causes of recidivism.

      If you want to cut the crime rate, get young men jobs.

  3. Considering Josh Penry still won’t release his full, itemized, line-by-line budget plan, I would like to know where he would try to find the cuts if not from releasing eligible prisoners 6 months early.

    What’s kind of ironic about this whole thing is that this is a case where the fact that the Governor relies on blue ribbon commissions and panels all the time can come in handy. It’s not like he came up with these recommendations all by himself–he is executi9ng a plan from the Colorado Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice.

    As soon as Josh Penry can show us where he’d find the funds to cut, then he can criticize the Governor on things like this. Until then, he gets to sit at the kids table and order off the clown face menu.

      1. Josh Penry spews his ignorant CSB, yet again.  Will this guy ever realize that sane people will never buy his garbage?  Not all people in Colorado are as dumb as his Mesa County racist teabagger backers.  But he still keeps hoping, I guess.

  4. The main (not only)reason that the U.S. imprisons more people than anybody else is that we have sizeable minorities of different color than the majority with the black group having been held in slavery for a couple hundred years and then in economic servitude for a hundred years coupled with the lingering idiotic notion of frontier justice. If the Chinese had a different color sizeable minority group then they would probably be number 1 in incarceration. White collar criminals (usually white people) don’t go to jail unless the crimes are extreme. Blue collar criminals go to jail, including “white trash.” The white trash label signifying that they are not really one of us – the legitimate white people. White people even go to black countries, take over, rename them for famous white people (e.g., Rhodesia), and enslave and incarcerate the native citizens. Because the white people are now more tolerant (the ruling class and their lackeys having lost the civil rights battle), we have to incarcerate them to show em who’s still the boss.

  6.    It will be better if Doug Bruce and/or Independence Institute also support the plan since it will save tax dollars and move us further down road towards become the Somalia of the Rockies.

  7. …and I know a lot of Democrats who agree with me.  But on this issue, I think there’s something to be said for pragmatism.  I wouldn’t want to see a murderer or rapist go free a day early, but short of violent felons, I would support the early release program.

    Ritter still needs to look at cutting a lot of other programs–that budget hole wont be fixed from shedding a fraction of the prison population.  But it’s a start.

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