Polis Calls For Re-Opening Cañon City Prison As Reform Backup

DENVER, CO –By John Herrick for The Colorado Independent. This story was updated at 4 p.m. on Friday with reaction from lawmakers and edited for clarity
Gov. Jared Polis wants to re-open a mothballed maximum security prison in Cañon City in case Colorado’s inmate population outgrows its current facilities. At the same time, the governor plans to push criminal justice reforms aimed at moving more parole-eligible inmates back into the community, which he hopes will reduce the inmate population and preclude the need for Cañon City prison beds in the near term.

Polis’s goals were included in a statement accompanying his $971-million budget request for the Department of Corrections, an approximate 9 percent increase over last year’s budget, which he released at 5 p.m. Thursday.

The administration is asking for authorization to open Centennial South Correctional Facility in Cañon City, a $200-million prison that taxpayers just recently paid off. The prison, which was built to hold prisoners in solitary confinement, was shuttered in 2012 when the practice of isolating prisoners for long periods came under criticism.

The statement stipulated Cañon City would only be used if the state’s prison population reached 99 percent capacity for two consecutive months or more. But by the end of his term, in 2022, he wants to turn the prison into an intake center and use Denver Reception and Diagnostic Center, or DRDC, as a place to provide long-term care and mental health treatment. Some lawmakers back this plan because they say it’s easier to find qualified medical professionals in Denver than it is in rural Colorado.

A concern is that the state’s prison population has started to increase in the past few years after several years of decline. Projections show the total prison population could swell from the current 20,200 to 25,000 by 2022, far exceeding current bed counts. Currently, there are fewer than 100 state prison beds left in the entire 14,505-bed system, not including beds in private prisons and community corrections.

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Gov. Jared Polis delivering his inaugural State of the State address. (Photo by Alex Burness)