Willie Horton, Colorado Style

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by: Colorado Pols

As most of you know by now, Gov. Bill Ritter has instituted a program in the state Department of Corrections intended to alleviate prison crowding and help close the massive and growing hole in the state’s budget. Under the new program, some inmates are being released about ninety days (on average) prior to their scheduled mandatory release date. The original estimated benefit from this plan was estimated to be around $19 million dollars, though the figure may be smaller since many “eligible” inmates are reportedly not meeting the state parole board’s strict standards.

The key point to keep in mind here is that all of the inmates being considered for early release, whatever their original headline-worthy crime may have been, were going to be released in the next six months anyway, and are arguably being subjected to closer monitoring in the new program than they would have otherwise. That said, there are going to be recidivist convicts released, just like they would be in a few months’ time when their sentence was up. It is what it is, unpleasant choices forced on the state by crippling fiscal shortfalls–not some kind of “open the gates” disaster for public safety.

Unfortunately, this program is being blown out of all earthly proportion by opportunistic politicos–abetted by some of the laziest, most irresponsible reporting we’ve ever seen from the state’s newspaper of record, the Denver Post. It is our opinion that a great disservice to the people of Colorado is being done by this combination of willful demagoguery and journalistic sloppiness. We’ll start with Post reporter Kirk Mitchell’s latest, “Colorado prison cuts possible elsewhere.”

“It doesn’t appear to be working,” said state Rep. Kent Lambert, R-Colorado Springs, referring to Gov. Bill Ritter’s plan to cut $19 million from the budget by releasing thousands of prisoners on parole up to six months early. “Their assumptions were bad, or something.”

Lambert, a member of the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee, said the issue should be addressed when the committee meets in November and December…

Following a report Wednesday in The Denver Post that showed a sex offender, a man convicted of vehicular homicide and a felon arrested 46 times were among the first 10 inmates given early releases, Republican lawmakers called on Ritter to end the program immediately.

On Thursday, the newspaper learned that Rick Martinez, 48, an inmate with a record of 46 arrests, absconded on Oct. 6 and a warrant for his arrest has been issued.

“When something goes terribly wrong, it won’t be just the governor who bears responsibility,” said Sen. Scott Renfroe, R-Greeley. “It will also reflect on every member of the General Assembly who failed to step forward in opposition.”

There’s a very simple reason why, after a string of increasingly silly attacks on the state payroll, the Governor’s internal discussions about the next round of forced budget cuts, even the use of state aircraft on official business–which has dropped considerably–Republicans have turned with all the outrage they can pump up to this “slightly-early” release program. It’s because convicts are scary and provoke emotional reactions. Just as Willie Horton was lethal to 1988 presidential candidate Michael Dukakis, all it’s going to take is one of these convicts getting “released early” and committing a new crime, and you’ve got an issue you can demagogue all the way to the polls next year. And it works: the visceral fear inspired by a mugshot in a television ad next to the words “back on the streets” is a powerful weapon.

It won’t matter in the 527 ads featuring Bill Ritter’s Willie Horton, whoever he turns out to be, just like it apparently doesn’t matter to Kirk Mitchell, that these convicts would all be back out on the streets in the next six months anyway. It won’t matter that the program is likely to result, based on its more intensive supervision and support services, in an overall lower rate of recidivism among participants. All it’s going to take is the one splashy incident, and off we’ll go.

What’s even worse about this latest “report” from Kirk Mitchell is he apparently doesn’t care that the title of the story, “Colorado prison cuts possible elsewhere,” is itself highly questionable:

Lambert said the DOC could reduce the budget by cutting staff, sending inmates to less costly private prisons or cutting programs. “We have some serious questions we need to ask them about this.”

The early-release program did not result in any layoffs in public prisons, Sanguinetti has said. It will only affect private prisons, which will lose $57.41 per day for each inmate released early.

Parole board chief Dave Michaud, who supports this program (Mitchell conveniently omits this detail), notes that we could also give lots more paroles–to illegal immigrants so they could be deported, and to inmates who could be transferred to other states where they are due to serve time. As for Lambert’s suggestion of cutting staff and rehab programs, ask any already-hard pressed corrections worker what he thinks of those ideas. Once again, they’re not serious proposals to cut the budget–and whatever is workable among them should be done in addition to this accelerated transition program, not as an irrationally-provoked replacement.

Bottom line: what we’re seeing here is an opening for Republicans, with help from a lazy (or complicit) reporter, to drive home an attack that has proven effective time and time again–and the opportunity to damage Ritter on an emotionally responsive issue erases all questions for them about dishonest and wildly hyperbolized claims. They won’t miss this chance to either nauseate or terrify you–depending on how informed you are.

But you’ll also notice we haven’t said anything to the effect of “this won’t hurt Ritter.” For the reasons we’ve outlined above, and all the ways misinformation seems to trump reality lately, even in the pages of the state’s largest newspaper…we’re not nearly as sure of that.

14 thoughts on “Willie Horton, Colorado Style”

Libertad says:

October 16, 2009 at 6:35 pm

But through the decline in revenues (taxes paid by businesses and people) the state failed to manage in a fiscally responsible manner knowing what was coming and how it was contrained by Gallagher and A-23.

TABOR’s clear opportunity should have signaled to Colorado’s vast community of non profit and government leaders that the time was at hand to go to the voters for specific and demonstrated increases in taxes and fees back in the 2006-2010 window.

Trying to Friday afternoon QB the evolving story by assaulting reporters at the Denver Post seems like an odd plan of attack.

You denigrate your message with collateral attack spin when all your suggesting is jumping on the rainy day fund ideas proposed by the GOP during the last few years of run-up government spending and outsized government program development/expansion.

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1. Republican 36 says:
  
  October 16, 2009 at 7:20 pm
  
  but your assertion that Colorado’s political leaders could have foretold the present recession between 2006 and 2010, and beforehand proposed tax increases to deal with it isn’t in the realm of reality either factually or politically. No one, Republican or Democrat, could have predicted the present recession or the depth of the recession.
  
  What we need to do is repeal TABOR, Amendment 23 and the Gallagher amendment and go back to what the founding fathers intended – representative government. With our original form of government in place, Colorado will have the abiltiy to actually deal with these kinds of issues in the future. If, we ,the citizens, don’t like how our representatives handle the situation we can vote for someone else in the next election. Thats our end of the bargain.
  
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  1. Libertad says:
    
    October 16, 2009 at 8:27 pm
    
    I know your committed to building a better Colorado, I just wonder at who’s expense because there is nothing about curtailing the spending spree occuring with the citizen’s cash.
    
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  2. One Queer Dude says:
    
    October 17, 2009 at 2:04 am
    
    Amen
    
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    1. cologeek says:
      
      October 17, 2009 at 4:06 am
      
      Both have too many advocates who will oppose such an action tooth and nail. Gallagher maybe, I think that most people don’t have any idea what it is or what it is for, leaving the way open for a repeal.
      
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      1. gertie97 says:
        
        October 17, 2009 at 5:33 am
        
        It would raise every single homeowner’s taxes. That Gallagher is unfair to businesses is no matter to homeowners. There are far more homeowners in the state than business owners, so repealing Gallagher is dead in the water.
        
        Always will be.
        
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2. ajb says:
  
  October 16, 2009 at 7:22 pm
  
  TABOR’s clear opportunity???
  
  Friday afternoon QB???
  
  denigrate your message???
  
  WTF?
  
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Republican 36 says:

October 16, 2009 at 7:04 pm

They complain about the early release program and demand that Gov. Ritter close it down and cut the budget somewhere else but par for the course they don’t sugggest where the cuts can be made, even though Rep. Lambert (R-Colorado Springs) is a member of the Joint Budget Committee and has access to all the budget information for each executive branch agency and therefore is presumed to have the information and knowledge to know where we can cut the budget.

We also need to look at the two candidates for the Republican nominaiton for governor – Messrs. Penry and McInnis. Mr. McInnis has not offered any plan for budget cuts.

Mr. Penry on the other hand has finally made a suggestion and it, like most of his pronouncements, falls apart when analyzed. He is now telling people the following. He will repeal the FASTER bill and thus eliminate $250 million from the Colorado Department of Transportation budget and replace it by tranferring 13.5% of the state sales tax revenue (approximately $250 million) to the CDOT budget while simultaneously holding the Department of Corrections (prisons), Medicaid and K-12 harmless but what he doesn’t even mention is the fact that his proposal means a net loss of $250 million to the state and someone/some agency has to take the hit for the lost revenue.

By putting Medicaid, K-12 and Corrections off limits the only place he can go to cut the budget that much is higher education (colleges and universities). He hasn’t said that is where he will cut but that will be the only large budget where he can go to make that kind of cut and he is asserting this even though the budget s for our colleges and universities is headed for the cliff right now when the federal Stimulus funds are exhausted in just over one year.

Mr. Penry’s plan reminds me of his sponsorship and support for Amendment 52. Please keep in mind he sponsored Amendment 52 where he proposed to take severance tax revenue earmarked for water projects and impact funds for local cities and counties in the oil patch and through his consititutional amendment appropriate it for maintenance and construction on the I-70 corridor. Once again, he is playing a shell game by robbing Peter to pay Paul. He is simply moving money around to make it look like he is solving one problem while (without admitting it) he is creating major difficulties for other state programs or failing to address other services state government is charged with addressing.

His proposal establishes one very important point. He is landlocked by absolute Republican ideology. No matter how legitimate the need for government services may be (colleges and univeristies)taxes can never be increased and the object of goverance is to starve agencies of revenues and then blame them for not functioning properly. Government is evil must be destroyed.

He should be more careful. Even his hometown newspaper, the Grand Junction Sentinel, in an editorial last week, specifically called out Mr. Penry and his legislative colleagues from Mesa County (Reps. King and Bradford) and asked them to publicly oppose the tax cut proposals the far right-wing is attempting to put on the ballot next year.

In addition to that, Mr. Brown, executive director of Club 20, released a letter where his organization warned that cutting higher education will cripple the state and advocated for additional funding for our colleges and universities. Apparently, the West slope’s premier business organization, now dominated by the oil and gas industry, won’t appreciate Mr. Penry’s unspoken but inevitable higher education budget cuts.

Do we want someone to be governor, like Mr. Penry, who doesn’t want to govern?

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1. Ralphie says:
  
  October 16, 2009 at 7:18 pm
  
  Do we want someone to be governor, like Mr. Penry, who doesn’t want to govern?
  
  I suppose it’s one path to less government.
  
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cologeek says:

October 17, 2009 at 4:27 am

Of all the cuts he is making, this is the one that has the biggest potential to blow up in his face. They aren’t “opening the floodgates” but if they are releasing sex offenders and habitual criminals (I can’t think of any other way to describe someone with 46 arrests!) that doesn’t tend to help when trying to reassure someone that they aren’t at any additional risk. If this doesn’t work to save anywhere near what is promised from the budget, then that will just be more ammunition to be used against the Governor next fall.

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1. redstateblues says:
  
  October 18, 2009 at 9:00 pm
  
  The prisoners who are getting released would be getting released in six months anyway. I don’t know that keeping them in jail for another half a year is going to do a whole hell of a lot, but the cost savings by letting them out a few months early are real.
  
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  1. cologeek says:
    
    October 20, 2009 at 5:38 am
    
    if someone becomes the victim of an early parolee. And as Pols said above:
    
    The original estimated benefit from this plan was estimated to be around $19 million dollars, though the figure may be smaller since many “eligible” inmates are reportedly not meeting the state parole board’s strict standards.
    
    If there are (God forbid) any high profile incidents involving an early parolee, and if the savings aren’t near what was originally claimed, Governor Ritter may have fed heavy ammo to whoever the Republicans have running against him.
    
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    1. redstateblues says:
      
      October 20, 2009 at 10:34 am
      
      FASTER will be a major attack point too.
      
      I thought you were talking about the reality, and not just the political reality.
      
      There’s going to be a lot of ammo against Ritter, I’m just not convinced that it’s going to be enough for Penry or McInnis to win. Neither of them have been able to really get going, but Ritter is weak. There’s a lot of time still left, but the state of the race hasn’t changed a whole hell of a lot since Penry and McInnis announced. That’s a de facto win for Bill Ritter.
      
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Automaticftp says:

October 17, 2009 at 6:30 pm

have a discussion around some of the absurd sentencing laws in this state.

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