In 2010, Colorado lawmakers took a meaningful step towards drug law reform by passing House Bill 1352, which nibbles at the edges of the disastrous War on Drugs by amending some of Colorado's controlled substance statutes. And while lawmakers continued that reform momentum in 2011, those efforts were tempered by other bills that expanded an already intrusive and expensive drug law regime that returns questionable public safety value.

The 2011 Colorado legislature took a modest, but welcome step towards restraining its own penchant for overcriminalizing the economic and personal lives of Coloradans. Let's hope it makes us all a little bit freer from an often overweening state.

To be sure, when offenders released to parole then re-offend (commit crimes), a revocation of parole (or a new prosecution) and a return to prison is a necessary part of the price we pay for separating criminals from the public. But technical parole revocations back to prison (where there is not a new crime, but rather some violation of the terms of parole) is an available area for lawmakers to seek out reforms for both cost savings and more efficient use of existing criminal justice resources.

On Tuesday, February 8th the Independence Institute’s Justice Policy Initiative, the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, and the Pew Center on the States came together again to hold a panel event at the University Club to discuss the work by the Colorado Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice (CCJJ) and sentencing reform in 2011. Despite [...]

Scribd file: IB-2005-B The civil libertarians who warned about a New McCarthyism in the United States turned out to be right. As in the early 1950s, politicians – abetted by an uncritical press – are national security…

The first and most basic duty of Colorado’s criminal justice system is to protect the innocent from force and fraud. And as a government service, the roughly $32,000 (average cost)1 taxpayers spend annually per state prisoner is a good bargain for the separation of violent and predatory criminals from the public.