By Shelly Bradbury
The Denver Post
DENVER — Lawmakers want to give the Colorado State Parole Board the power to release prisoners who complete a specialized program for people who committed crimes as juveniles and young adults after Gov. Jared Polis stopped approving such releases.
Polis currently has the sole authority to release the program’s graduates from prison. But the governor has not done so since 2023, unilaterally stalling the program and creating a backlog of about a dozen prisoners who have spent decades behind bars and applied for and completed the three-year program aimed at their rehabilitation and release, but who remain incarcerated, awaiting Polis’ sign-off.
Senate Bill 26-158, introduced in early April, would allow the parole board to approve releases if the governor does not act for 60 days on a program graduate’s application for early parole, opening up a new route through which program graduates could be freed.
Any decision Polis made in the 60-day window would be final, according to the bill. If the governor did not act on a prisoner’s application for release, the decision would revert to the parole board.
The bill doesn’t change who is eligible for the program or the requirements to complete it, said Sen. Mike Weissman , an Aurora Democrat sponsoring the legislation. But it does establish a timeline so that prisoners who finish the program won’t wait longer than 60 days to find out whether they’ll be released on early parole.
Gov. Jared Polis stops releasing prisoners who’ve spent decades behind bars for youthful crime
“We do mean there to be a clear, if you will, shot clock, a time parameter, either way,” Weissman said, adding that the bill will apply to the backlog of prisoners in the program as well as future graduates.
State lawmakers created the Juveniles and Young Adults Convicted as Adults Program, or JYACAP, in 2016 after the U.S. Supreme Court found that children are constitutionally different from adults and should not be automatically sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Lawmakers that year also changed Colorado law to prohibit such punishment.
Initially limited to juveniles, the program was expanded in 2021 to include prisoners who committed a crime when they were 20 or younger and who have served at least 20 years of their sentence.
The prisoners must also meet a variety of other conditions to enter the three-year program, which focuses on building life skills and preparing for life outside of prison. The bill would expand that curriculum to require prisoners to acknowledge the impact and trauma of their crimes.
After prisoners finish the program and receive a recommendation from the parole board on whether they should be released on early parole, the governor must make the final decision. Polis routinely approved releases from the program between 2020 and 2023, freeing all 17 program graduates in that time frame, but stopped doing so in recent years, expressing “discomfort” with the governor’s role in the process.
Polis supports the proposed new process, Eric Maruyama, his press secretary, said Wednesday.
” Governor Polis is focused on making Colorado safer, and an important part of that is ensuring that individuals convicted of crimes from their youth get the support they need before being released back to the community,” he said in a statement. “The governor is supportive of the JYACAP program and the bill, which would improve the decision-making process for individuals who have completed the program and provide a clear decision timeline for all parties involved.”
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