Colorado Governor Tells Lawmakers to Open New Prison
On March 18, 2026, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis (D) told state lawmakers that the state must immediately move to open a new new prison to account for a projected growth in prisoner numbers, according to The Colorado Sun.
Gov. Polis’ demand came as Colorado grapples with a $1 billion budget shortfall that the state legislature has cut social services to address. And, as one of Gov. Polis’ staff warned the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee, a single prison—which would cost $200 million—may not be enough to account for the estimated influx. “We may even need two prisons,” the staff member said, despite Colorado adopting policies in recent years to decrease its prison population such as reclassifying crimes and changing sentencing structures.
Advocates blame the state Department of Corrections’ adoption of stricter parole policies that keep people in prison for longer time periods. As Kyle Giddings, deputy director of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, told The Colorado Sun, the state’s parole board has been less likely to grant parole and far more aggressive in its enforcement of parole violations. “There is no piece of legislation that did this,” Giddings added. “These are just independent choices of the parole board. And it’s peaking now.”
The Colorado legislature was presented with two options for the potential new prison: buying and reviving a closed private prison or contracting with a private prison company to reopen a separate facility. The first option involves the state purchasing the Huerfano County Correctional Center in Walsenburg, a 700-bed former privately run prison owned by CoreCivic that closed in 2010. The facility received media coverage recently because CoreCivic sought to contract with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to reopen it to detain immigrants.
The second option would be to contract with a private prison profiteer to reopen and operate a facility somewhere in the state. Only one privately run prison, the Cheyenne Mountain Reentry Center in Colorado Springs, previously operated by The GEO Group, has closed since Gov. Polis assumed office in 2019. There are two other private prisons currently operational in Colorado, the Bent County Correctional Facility and Crowley County Correctional Facility; both facilities are owned by CoreCivic and together they lock up roughly one-fifth of the state’s prisoners.
Source: The Colorado Sun
As a digital subscriber to Prison Legal News, you can access full text and downloads for this and other premium content.
Already a subscriber? Login