Criminal Justice and Coronavirus

We know this is a troubling time because of coronavirus, particularly for those who are or have loved ones that are incarcerated.  If there’s anything we can do to help you or your loved one in prison, on parole, or in a halfway house, please don’t hesitate to reach out to info@ccjrc.org and we’ll do our best to be useful.  We just wanted to share a few updates.

• Things have been in flux and CCJRC is focusing much of our efforts on trying to get as many people as possible safely released from prison and halfway houses.
• Things are evolving and changing rapidly so we will do our best to keep you updated on what we know. If you have information to share, please don’t assume we know and feel free to email us at info@ccjrc.org.
• If you or a loved one is struggling with the many challenges of our current reality, here’s a list of COVID-19 related health and behavioral health resources on our Take Care Health Matters website.

Please take care of yourselves and be safe! We will keep you posted on any new information we receive. Be sure and sign up for our e-mail alerts.

Although some of this you may already know, we thought we’d start from the beginning.

Take good care,
CCJRC Staff

Governor’s Orders

There has been, and will continue to be ongoing efforts from many groups to advocate for COVID-19 responses that will reduce transmission in courtrooms, jails, detention centers, and halfway houses. Some responses have been more aggressive than others. Here’s a chronology:

• On March 16^th, Colorado Supreme Court Justice Nathan Coats issued an Order regarding COVID-19 and operations in Colorado state courts. Although Justice Coats’ Order laid out some statewide guidance, it essentially allowed local courts to adopt their own practices, which has led to a patch work of approaches. Some courts are aligning operations with COVID-19 health practices and recommendations, but many are not which is putting the health and safety of court staff, attorneys, clients, and juries at risk. On Friday, April 3^rd, the defense bar filed two cases with the Colorado Supreme Court to require courts and jails to adopt COVID-19 best practices. CCJRC was a party in one of those cases but, unfortunately, the Court has already denied them. The fight will continue.
• On March 17^th, the public and private criminal defense bar, ACLU and CCJRC submitted a letter to the governor requesting immediate action to address COVID-19 responses in courtrooms, jails, halfway houses, and prisons.
• On March 24th, the governor issued Guidance to local law enforcement regarding COVID-19 in Colorado jails and detention facilities, including reducing the number of people in jail. The governor doesn’t have authority over local law enforcement or jails so he can only issue “guidance”.  We want to give a big shout out to the Public Defender’s Office and the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar . Their efforts have been unwaveringly aggressive in securing PR or low-cost bonds for clients in jail. So far, the population in the state’s largest 15 jails has declined by more than 30%.
• On March 25^th, the governor issued an Executive Order Suspending Statutes Concerning Criminal Justice that focuses on DOC and halfway houses. The top lines are listed below, along with our understanding of the implementation status in supporting bullet points.

1. The DOC director has the authority to refuse to accept anyone sentenced to prison that was held in the county jail.

• • Implementation started – Right now it’s our understanding that people recently sentenced to prison who were in jail are staying in jail. DOC will shortly be opening beds at CSP2 as a way to quarantine, for up to 14 days, anyone being admitted to prison. At the end of the quarantine period, if people don’t have any symptoms, they will be transferred to DRDC for the “normal” intake process.

2.  All caps and criteria for the award of earned time are suspended. The DOC director has the authority to award as much earned time for whatever reasons he wants.

• • DOC hasn’t finalized the criteria yet. We will let you know when they do.

3.  Special needs parole is opened up to allow folks in high vulnerability categories for COVID-19 to be released prior to their parole eligibility date, in addition to the people who meet the statutory criteria.

• • Implementation started – DOC has developed a more streamlined process and last week started presenting packets to the Parole Board. CCJRC is helping DOC identify housing for people who don’t have a sponsor and is trying to make sure people have continuity of medical/behavioral healthcare post-release. If the Parole Board doesn’t think people can access the adequate level of medical care, then it isn’t likely to grant release.   

4.  The DOC director has the authority to release people who are within 180 days of their parole eligibility date.

• • Implementation started – We know the DOC is putting together lists of folks to review for release from prison straight to ISP-I. We don’t know how many have been released so far. We will find out more and share more information in our next email.

5.  Waives the daily fee people are required to pay when they are a resident of a halfway house; gives the state agency budgetary flexibility.

• • Implementation started – The halfway houses have been particularly chaotic as a number of them have had people test positive and/or have been exposed. Unfortunately, the Division of Criminal Justice didn’t issue statewide guidelines for all halfway houses to ensure consistent implementation of COVID-19 best practices. So different halfway houses are doing different things. Social distancing is not happening and practically can’t happen, unless the residential population declines substantially. Last week, DOC started approving people to go on non-residential status or furlough.  As a general rule, people are going to need to be on level 3 or level 4 to be considered for non-res. We have less information on the diversion population in the halfway houses.  

Other Colorado Department of Corrections Updates

At a minimum, we’ve been told that DOC wants to get to at least a 10% vacancy rate to allow them to create areas for quarantining people who are symptomatic, but it is virtually impossible to create the social distancing recommended in prison. At the end of March, the men’s prison population was slightly over 100% but that already should be starting to drop because DOC is not returning people to prison for technical parole violations, unless the violation poses an immediate risk to public safety. As mentioned above, DOC is also not accepting new prison admissions until the CSP2 quarantine intake unit is up and running.

DRDC, Sterling Correctional Facility and Colorado Territorial Correctional Facility are on “modified operations” which means that people are kept in their units and each unit is eating and having recreation separately. This is causing delays but the intention is to reduce interaction of people from different units.

The last we heard there were three DOC staff who tested positive for COVID-19 and 151 inmates were in quarantine, although we don’t know if any inmates are positive because widespread testing isn’t occurring.

We don’t have a lot of information yet on how many people have been released from prison since the Executive Order went into effect. The governor didn’t require any public reporting of that information. CCJRC is trying to get that information and will share what we find out.

DOC created a webpage specifically for COVID-19 that is updated periodically.  Here’s info from GTL, the DOC vendor for communication services and a link to the GTL website for any updates on video visiting and phone calls. There were some technology problems in the beginning but hopefully they have been worked out. As far as we know, GTL is giving people in prison one free video visit a month and one free call a week.

WAGEES Community Reentry Programs

We want to give a big shout to the 18 WAGEES reentry programs and the Latino Coalition for Community Leadership for leaning into this moment and continuing to help people released from prison despite their own challenges with modifying operations to work remotely as much as possible. With an increased number of people being released, there is going to be even more that is asked of them.

We will keep you posted on how you can help support community reentry in subsequent emails. CCJRC is working with the Latino Coalition, the WAGEES programs, and others on a housing expansion plan to help people in prison, who don’t have a sponsor, put together a parole plan. One of the biggest barriers to having either DOC or the Parole Board grant release is if someone doesn’t have a place to live.

Legislative Update

The Supreme Court recently ruled that the 120 day legislative session doesn’t have to be 120 consecutive days, which gives the General Assembly a lot more flexibility but we have no idea when the legislative session will actually resume. Both the state budget and the School Finance Act must be passed by June 30, 2020, as our state fiscal year begins on July 1st.

The March budget revenue forecast painted a grim picture for our state finances for next fiscal year. The longer things are shut down, the worse the picture becomes. That being said, the recently passed federal stimulus package will provide some relief, but it is not yet known how or when those federal dollars will reach us.

The Joint Budget Committee is on recess until further notice, so we don’t know when they will continue their work of setting the budget for next fiscal year and what that process will look like going forward. Given all of these moving parts, CCJRC will continue to provide you relevant legislative updates as they become available.

CCJRC Programmatic Update

CCJRC has shifted a lot of our energy and staff into direct service to help people get out of prison and the halfway houses with the community support and access to any medical care they need.

Other staff is continuing to focus on civic engagement because the November election has taken on even more importance. But even our civic engagement team is also pivoting to offer support to the WAGEES reentry programs.