The United States has always stood for democracy and freedom, and essential to that freedom is our judicial system. Public safety and justice are equal priorities in this state, and in an effort to preserve fairness and public safety for all Coloradans, we introduced SB 286—a bill that would address sentencing reform.
In Colorado 1 out of 29 adults are under correctional control, which has translated into $686 million of funding to Corrections this year. We only give more funding to Medicaid and K-12 education. When we face the threat of closing community colleges, we clearly need to take a look at fair and just sentencing. But we realized that with a little more than two weeks left in the session, this needs a full and fair discussion.
We need a collaborative approach and everyone must be and will be at the table for it: Governor Ritter, law enforcement, district attorneys, the public defender, and those of us in the legislature. That is why tomorrow we will offer a strike-below on SB 286. This strike-below will offer some guidance on the work the state needs from the Colorado Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice. We will ask the Commission to look at sentencing reform and come back to the legislature in a timely manner with proposed solutions. We need the best policies and the best long term solutions for our budget problems, including sentence reform. Let’s be clear—sentencing reform is not synonymous with sentence reductions. Reform means just that: making changes to our correctional system to help it run more efficiently and to keep Colorado safe. All of us involved will make sure we are doing the right thing for our budget, for our correctional system, and for Colorado.
Posted by SenatorShaffer in Blog []