In 2014, Kenneth Dean Lee was convicted and sentenced to 23 years to life for posing as an immigration doctor and sexually assaulting multiple children. George Brauchler, the district attorney in charge of prosecuting Lee in 2014, told CBS that he “had never come across another person who was more conniving, more deliberate, more planned out in the way he did it.”

The investigation revealed that Lee committed his heinous acts as far back as 1996.

With that sentence, you would expect to see Lee still behind bars.

He is in jail. But only because in 2021, he was arrested again.

Same scheme to gain access to another victim, this time a 7-year-old in Aurora.

In 2015, Eric Garcia was convicted and sentenced to 47 years for a plethora of crimes such as meth, robbery, stealing cars, and burglary.

Again, you’d probably expect to see him still behind bars for his 2015 convictions. He is in jail. But only because he was arrested again this year on charges of robbing five convenience stores with a gun.

The stories of Lee and Garcia aren’t unique. In Colorado, individuals convicted of a Class 2 Felony, including 2nd degree murder, sexual assault, human trafficking, and kidnapping, only serve an average of 43.6% of their full sentence.

Between “earned time,” “good time,” and a soft-on-crime state parole board, violent criminals are getting out far too early — and far too many of them are reoffending.

Colorado is currently suffering from a drastic increase in crime, both to persons and property.

The average monthly crime rate per 100,000 residents has increased from 442 in 2008 to 530 today; our murder rate is still 30% higher than it was pre-pandemic, and according to the Common Sense Institute, our larger cities remain in the top 10 in the nation for violent crime, rape, robbery, burglary, larceny/theft, motor vehicle theft, property crime, and arson.

Early last year, Gov. Jared Polis pledged to make Colorado one of the 10 safest states in the country, and that should start with ensuring that we keep violent criminals off our streets — and that they serve a larger portion of their sentence.

Advance Colorado is working on a ballot initiative for the 2024 ballot that will require violent criminals convicted of second-degree murder, sexual assault, human trafficking, and kidnapping to serve at least 85% of their sentence.

While our state should absolutely work to rehabilitate certain offenders — especially for those dealing with addiction issues — we need to strike a proper balance.

We’re not seeking to round up and lock up thousands of individuals. In fact, only about 449 individuals would be covered by this initiative last year.

Victims, their families, and the public deserve to know how long a criminal will be put behind bars. Imagine having to explain to the parents of that 7-year-old in Aurora why, despite a 23-year-to-life sentence in 2014, the perpetrator was able to victimize their child just seven years later.

Colorado has one of the worst recidivism rates in the nation, and until our state gets serious about keeping violent offenders behind bars, we probably won’t see a significant change in that anytime soon.

If legislators won’t step up and fix this problem, we’ll use the citizens initiative process to let voters weigh in directly.

Michael Fields is the president of Advance Colorado Institute.