by Douglas Ankney

Stonewalling by the Colorado Department of Corrections (DOC) in providing treatment to people convicted of sexual offenses has allowed some of those people to be released without any treatment and at the same time delayed parole consideration for others. In 1998, Colorado lawmakers overhauled the system of sentencing and monitoring people convicted of sex offenses to include a lifetime supervision policy as a “comprehensive way to protect the public and stop further crimes.”

The new system required those convicted of sex offenses to receive treatment while incarcerated before they could be released and to be under continuous supervision after release. The new sentences for these crimes would be “indeterminate,” such as “two years to life,” meaning the person would be eligible for release on parole after two years, but could remain in prison for life if he or she would not or could not complete the treatment.

At the time the new system was adopted, former Adams County District Attorney Bob Grant praised the new approach, asserting “the problem is going to be addressed and that offender is not going to recidivate.” Well, the panacea of the new system has failed to reach fruition. Almost 30 years later, DOC officials have failed to hire sufficient staff to provide the legislatively mandated treatment. Several hundred prisoners in the DOC’s custody are on a waiting list for their turn to receive the treatment. As of July 2024, more than 160 of them were long past their parole eligibility dates but remained incarcerated “because of a years-long shortage of therapists and resistance by state officials for allowing alternative forms of treatment,” the Denver Post reported. Disturbingly, more than 2,000 people convicted of similar and even more severe crimes were released untreated in the past five years.

The prisoners released without treatment had “determinate” or “fixed” sentences that meant their release dates were certain and they had to be released whether or not the DOC provided treatment to them. And without treatment, they are generally at higher risk of returning to prison. DOC spokesperson Alondra Gonzalez-Garcia said the agency “was charged with carrying out laws passed by the legislature and that people released without treatment would still be required to receive it while under supervision in the community.”

One of those released without treatment pled guilty in 2012 to kidnapping and sexual assault. His victim said in an interview that she was left “sick to my stomach” after learning he’d been released without treatment. She said, “You can’t very well effect change in somebody if you don’t give them resources to try and change. So, clearly you just let a monster back out on the street with no recourse for his behavior except for having sat in a box for 10 years.”

Laurie Rose Kepros, the director of sexual litigation for the Office of the Colorado State Public Defender, said “To me, this is a more fundamental fairness issue of, how on earth can we require people to do a program and then not deliver it and then [claim] it’s their problem and not ours?”

The new system is simply contradictory. On the one hand, treatment is supposedly effective and of such importance that it is sufficient to stall the release of some prisoners until they receive it, while at the same time, treatment seems to be of such little value that thousands of people convicted of similar or even more serious sexual offenses are released without so much as even speaking with a therapist. Some prisoners’ release dates are so chronically uncertain that many defense attorneys have stated they no longer allow their clients to plead guilty to crimes with indeterminate sentences.

Sarah Croog, a defense attorney and member of the state Sex Offender Management Board, which oversees the standards for the prison-based treatment system said, “I wouldn’t disagree that the system does function to keep people who’ve committed sex offenses in prison as long as possible. Whether it was intentionally designed that way or not it doesn’t matter. It’s what it does.” She added, “What it’s intended to do is to lock up the most dangerous sexual offenders until they are safe to rejoin society, and to prevent them from being on the streets because they’re on some level too dangerous to be free. That’s not how it works in practicality.”

In July 2024, nine prisoners convicted of sexual offenses and serving indeterminate sentences in the DOC ranging from two-years-to-life to 20-years-to-life brought a class-action lawsuit. The suit alleges that the DOC is now “providing treatment to higher-risk sex offenders who have finite sentences even if they’re not eligible for parole.” By moving those with finite sentences up on the waiting list and into treatment, those with indeterminate sentences but with parole eligibility are left behind to languish ever longer in custody. Attorneys representing the nine prisoners said the DOC “leaves by the wayside individuals who pose lower risks of recidivism, serving indeterminate sentences for less serious crimes of conviction, with shorter minimum sentences. This deprivation of treatment results in a de facto lifetime prison sentence for all sex offenders in Colorado with indeterminate sentences.”

Some of the nine plaintiffs had become eligible for parole within a year or two of entering prison. But since none had received treatment, none had been considered for release. The treatment program requires 41 therapists, but the DOC has hired only 15. Prisoners have offered to hire their own therapists and have located therapists willing to provide treatment remotely. But the DOC refused these alternatives.

The suit accurately explained the DOC “is not prioritizing access to treatment based on severity of an individual’s crime of conviction, his risk of reoffending, his willingness to participate in treatment, his behavior while incarcerated, his due process liberty interest or any other relevant and reasonable metric. DOC’s refusal to provide treatment to offenders serving indeterminate sentences is arbitrary and capricious.”

The DOC’s unwillingness to provide treatment and thereby increase the amount of time prisoners are being held in custodial facilities is one factor causing the explosive increase in Colorado’s prisoner population. According to a December 24, 2025 report in the Denver Post, “Colorado prisons will run out of beds for men in the next fiscal year unless significant changes are made to either reduce the prison population or increase capacity.”

The DOC has the capacity to house 15,077 men in state- and privately-run prisons. In November 2025, the average male population was 15,006. But the projected male prisoner population for fiscal year 2026 is expected to jump to 16,200 and for fiscal year 2027 it is projected to be 16,600. The surge in the male prisoner population is “largely attributed to a year-over-year drop in discretionary parole releases...along with an uptick in parole revocations,” according to the Denver Post.

Discretionary parole is granted after the Parole Board determines the prisoner is suitable for release. In October 2024, the Parole Board approved 1,284 prisoners for release on discretionary parole. In 2025, that number dropped by 20% to 1,030. And the backlog of prisoners awaiting treatment contributes to the decline in parole since they cannot even be considered for parole until they are treated.  

Sources: Denver Post, Greeley Tribune

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