By Peter Roper
The Pueblo Chieftain
CANON CITY, Colo. — In what seems like deja vu, the Legislature’s Joint Budget Committee agreed last Thursday to spend $1 million to reopen maximum security Centennial South prison near Canon City — a 950-bed prison that opened in 2010 but was closed just two years later.
Whether the full General Assembly likes the idea won’t be known until the new session begins in January, but the JBC decision last week is an echo of a drama that played out last year.
At last week’s JBC meeting, the committee staff said it was certain the number of state prisoners in 2019 would exceed the available prison beds by more than 1,000 inmates.
“Staff recommends that Centennial South be reopened,” the JBC analysis said. “It provides the most positives and least negatives of the options available.”
Centennial South is a maximum-security prison designed to hold inmates in solitary confinement. It was closed in 2012, only two years after opening, because the widespread use of solitary confinement has become a legal issue.
The DOC would like to add more features to the prison, such as a recreation yard, to make it usable. It forecasts the state’s prison population will be close to 21,000 next year.
The staff report to the JBC last week made no mention of leasing more beds from private prisons, such as 250 beds at the Huerfano County Correction Facility near Walsenburg.
But Sen. Larry Crowder, R-Alamosa, is making that recommendation again this year.
“We’re going to need those beds, and that’s just the way it is,” he said Thursday, especially because it will take time to get Centennial South ready to reopen.
A year ago, the JBC not only agreed with Crowder about the Walsenburg prison, but it also approved a $12 million plan that would have reopened Centennial South, as well.
All of that fell apart, however, when the Legislature began its session in January, when lawmakers were arguing over whether they could trust DOC estimates of the future prison population.
And it was clear many lawmakers wanted the DOC to make more use of community corrections and parole rather than simply reopen more prison space.
The JBC staff report given to the committee last week said that efforts to divert more inmates to community corrections or parole are worthwhile but unpredictable.
Given that, it recommended bringing Centennial South back into service.
Crowder pushed hard last session to get lawmakers to make at least partial use of the currently closed Huerfano County prison. He intends to make that case again when lawmakers reconvene in January.
“It’s right there in the numbers of inmates we are expecting,” he said.
DOC officials pressed lawmakers last May up until the last week of the session to give permission to lease space at the Huerfano prison. They were unsuccessful.