Colorado’s prison problem is underfunding. The legislature’s answer was early release.

By Shaina Cole | Contributing Writer, Rocky Mountain Voice

On May 19, Gov. Jared Polis signed two bills that will accelerate the release of inmates from Colorado’s prisons. No ceremony. No bill-specific statement. The governor’s office issued an administrative notice listing six pieces of legislation and went about its day.

The two prison bills, SB26-159 and SB26-158, arrived at his desk with the claim that Colorado’s prisons are overcrowded. 

The population pressure is real. The projected increase in the male inmate population this fiscal year is the largest in 14 years, with the exception of the post-pandemic rebound in FY 2021-22. But the legislature’s own budget documents tell a different story about why.

Colorado does not have a prison space problem. It has a funding problem. The bills Polis signed do nothing to resolve it, and will increase the number of inmates moving through the very pipeline the funding problem has already broken.

What the bills do

Senate Bill 26-159 raises the earned-time accrual rate from 12 days to 14 days per month for inmates serving sentences on class 4, 5, and 6 felonies and level 3 and 4 drug felonies. It allows up to 150 additional days of earned time for completing a milestone or phase of a behavioral health program related to recovery from a condition that contributed to the underlying offense. It raises the overall sentence-reduction cap from 30% to 35%. A safety clause made it effective the day Polis signed it.

The bill carves out certain serious offenders, capping them at 12 days per month rather than 14. That list includes people convicted of enticement of a child, internet luring of a child, false imprisonment, sexual exploitation offenses, illegal weapons offenses, felony motor vehicle theft, and offenses on the Victim Rights Act crime list under C.R.S. 24-4.1-302(1). 

The carve-out does not remove those offenders from earned-time eligibility. A person convicted of enticement of a child accrues 12 days of earned time per month, and may receive up to 150 more days for completing a milestone in a behavioral health program — if a condition contributed to their offense.

Senate Bill 26-158 applies to people convicted as adults for felonies committed before they turned 21, who have completed a specialized rehabilitation program in the Department of Corrections. Under prior law, the governor alone could grant them early parole after the parole board recommended it. 

The new bill adds a default: if the governor does not act on a parole board recommendation within 60 days, the recommendation automatically becomes final.That provision applies retroactively: any parole board recommendation already pending with Polis when the law took effect starts its own 60-day clock.

The bottleneck these bills will deepen

The JBC briefing the legislature received months before voting includes a section on the state’s parole supervision infrastructure. It is not a green light for expansion. 

“It is not clear at this time that the Department has the people, practices, and funding it needs to safely supervise a larger parole population,” the briefing states.

That decline did not happen in a single budget cycle. The JBC briefing traces it through a series of legislative decisions. 

The General Assembly set parole utilization targets rather than funding needed capacity in 2018. A FY 2019-20 budget request added case manager positions to take on administrative parole caseload, beginning the shift away from Community Parole Officers (CPOs). Starting in 2021, DOC began converting CPO positions to case manager roles under the RESTORE program through attrition outside the budget process. The legislature approved a $3.8 million reduction in FY 2020-21 that shifted assessment work from a third-party vendor onto parole officers  and a FY 2021-22 CPO transfer was approved on paper but the positions were never filled as described. 

Each decision reduced the funded allocation of field officers or shifted them away from hands-on supervision. The result: Community Parole Officers are down 30% over seven years.

The DOC’s November 2025 audit found 4,627 inmates past their parole eligibility dates. Of those, only 186, four percent, met the criteria for expedited release under the existing prison population management law. 

The statute excludes offenders convicted of any of 95 listed crimes — one of several criteria that shrink the pool, alongside requirements that an inmate be serving only a lower-level nonviolent or drug felony and hold both a favorable parole plan and a medium-or-lower risk score according to the DOC’s November 2025 performance audit. For the smaller eligible pool, the obstacle is the staffing failure itself. With the pipeline already this understaffed, it cannot move eligible people through at the rate the population requires.

SB26-159 and SB26-158 increase the number of inmates moving toward release without adding a single parole officer, restoring a single programming position or funding a single unfilled bed at Sterling or Buena Vista. 

914 beds, no money to staff them

At Sterling and Buena Vista, correctional officer vacancy rates are the highest in the state system — 21.2% at Sterling and 31% at Buena Vista. The JBC’s own supplemental document flagged that those two facilities account for approximately 25% of all DOC overtime hours.

The legislature has repeatedly declined to fund the positions and pay structures its own staff analysts identified as necessary to close those gaps. The DOC told the JBC that support staff are being utilized to mitigate the resulting overtime costs.

Four currently operating facilities hold unused male prison beds: 300 at Sterling, 200 immediately usable at Buena Vista with 118 more requiring construction, 288 at Delta, and 8 at Rifle. Total: 914 beds.

In January 2026, the DOC requested $2.4 million to activate 788 of those beds — 300 at Sterling, 200 at Buena Vista, and 288 at Delta — as a mid-year supplemental. 

The JBC denied the request 4-2 on January 21st, with Democrats citing the DOC’s lack of staffing and parole eligibility delays. The governor’s office came back the following week requesting reconsideration. The JBC approved the supplemental 5-1 on January 28th.

That approval covered the beds. It did not cover the staffing costs needed to run them sustainably. The JBC’s own supplemental analysis warned that opening beds at Sterling and Buena Vista would worsen an already critical overtime shortfall at those facilities. The 118 Buena Vista construction beds and the 8 at Rifle remain entirely unfunded.

The state approved more beds. It still has not funded the staff to run them.

A decade of closures behind it

Multiple correctional facilities have been closed under Democratic governors since 2010. 

District Attorney George Brauchler of the 23rd Judicial District documented the pattern in a March 2026 piece in the Denver Gazette, writing that the overcrowding crisis is “the predictable, deliberate and unnecessary outcome of Democrat political decision-making…” 

Among the closures: Fort Lyon Correctional Facility, approximately 500 beds, closed 2012; Hudson Correctional Facility, 1,250 beds, 2014; Kit Carson Correctional Center, 1,488 beds, 2016; Cheyenne Mountain Re-Entry Center, 710 beds, 2020; Colorado Correctional Facility at Camp George West, 150 beds, 2022. 

The JBC briefing separately calculates the state lost 1,062 male prison beds between 2020 and 2023 alone.

In January 2026, the governor’s office told the JBC the state would need to lease, purchase, or contract for an additional facility to address capacity needs, per the OSPB January 26, 2026 supplemental comeback. By March 2026, Polis’s office had presented two specific options: purchase Huerfano outright for an estimated $150 to $200 million and convert it to a state-operated facility, or contract with a private company to reopen a closed facility at an estimated $6 million in startup costs and roughly $40 million per year for approximately 700 beds, according to Colorado Sun and KUNC reporting from April 2026.

The JBC rejected the purchase option. It approved the contract concept in principle, building a trigger into the Long Bill directing DOC to submit an overexpenditure request if the June 2026 population forecast shows at least 200 additional beds needed beyond what was funded, but did not appropriate the money to begin the process, per the Long Bill Narrative.

Then it passed early-release bills.

More releases, the same broken pipeline

The legislature built this problem over a decade by closing facilities, declining to fund available beds, and declining to fund the staffing levels the system requires.

SB26-159 and SB26-158 do not address any of it. SB26-159 accelerates how quickly sentences shorten for inmates across multiple felony classes, including those convicted of child enticement and a broad range of felonies on the Victim Rights Act crime list, who remain eligible for earned-time reductions under the new law.

SB26-158 adds a default mechanism for early parole decisions for offenders convicted as adults of felonies committed before age 21: if the governor does not act within 60 days of receiving a parole board recommendation, that recommendation automatically becomes final.

Both bills increase the volume of people entering a parole supervision system with 30% fewer field officers than it had seven years ago and no new funding from either bill to correct either problem.