Will Hays, Hilltop’s Chief Operating Officer, has been appointed by Governor John Hickenlooper to serve on a state task force charged with reviewing the juvenile justice system and ensuring a path out of crime for offenders. Below is the story that ran in the Daily Sentinel:
Gov. John Hickenlooper is calling on state lawmakers, prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges to participate in a comprehensive review of the state’s juvenile justice system.
With the aid of the chairman of the House and Senate judiciary committees — Rep. Pete Lee, D-Colorado Springs, and Sen. Bob Gardner, R-Colorado Springs — the governor has created a special task force to determine ways to make sure juveniles who commit crimes have a clear path out of the state’s corrections system, one that doesn’t lead them back into it.
“Kids don’t belong in prison,” Hickenlooper said. “We know from the data that when children are incarcerated they usually become repeat offenders again and again. This data-driven review will help us provide youth the best chance to successfully transition to a crimefree productive adulthood.”
According to the Colorado Department of Youth Services, juveniles who enter the state’s justice system have a “stubbornly” high recidivism rate, which was between 49 percent and 55 percent from 2013 to 2015.
Since then, juvenile arrests and incarcerations have fallen, but the cost to deal with them has gone up, from $118.4 million last year to about $125 million this year.
“This initiative will help us take a close look at the system with the goal of improving the use of supervision and services, increasing collaboration across state and local agencies,” Gardner said. The task force is being created with help from the New Yorkbased Council of State Government Justice Center, a nonprofit group that works with state legislators nationwide to enact laws that increase public safety and strengthen communities.
The center will start by conducting an analysis of the state’s juvenile justice system. That will include data analysis of juveniles in and out of the system along with interviews of prosecutors, defense attorneys, judges, law enforcement and local agencies and community groups that deal with juveniles.
Following that six-month review, the center will present its findings to the task force, which will try to come to some consensus on proposed legislative changes to be presented to the Colorado Legislature when it reconvenes for the 2019 legislative session.
