Looks like Colorado’s corrections system is about to get more beds to accommodate an uptick in its prison population. The extra accommodations are overdue. So is the state’s newfound willingness to put at least a few more of its lawbreakers behind bars. 

And kudos to the legislature’s Joint Budget Committee at the State Capitol for providing the needed funding.

As reported last week by our news affiliate Colorado Politics, the powerful budget-writing committee approved nearly $3 million in supplemental funding for the Department of Corrections to pay for 153 more beds in medium-security correctional facilities. The state’s inmate population is “well above” what the department’s budget can handle, according to a corrections official. The overall vacancy rate for the state’s prisons is about 3%, but medium-security facilities in particular have seen vacancy rates under 1%.

Which means Colorado — where years of soft-on-crime policies helped launch a years-long crime wave — appears to be shifting tack. There’s no telling how long it’ll last, of course, given an offender-friendly legislature, where the “justice reform” fringe among ruling Democrats have been doing their best to decriminalize crime itself. But there’s no question getting more bad guys off the streets bolsters public safety for everyone else.

The budget committee’s OK for the added funding atones to some extent for the legislature’s decision last spring to cut 300 prison beds in the face of this year’s budget deficit. Balancing the budget was essential — something the legislature failed to do during the regular session — but it shouldn’t come at the expense of public safety. Bringing wrongdoers to justice, and locking them up, are among the truly essential functions of state and local government. 

Unfortunately, the recent rise in the number of prisoners also has triggered a 2018 state law enacted to curb prison crowding. Since the vacancy rate at the state’s correctional facilities has been under 3% for at least 30 consecutive days, a protracted series of steps will kick in under that law that could lead at some point to granting more parole. That’s a bad thing.

Among the reasons for our rising prison population has been a renewed commitment by parole officers to crack down on parole violations — another welcome development — and that success could be undercut if more prisoners are paroled once again.

There is a direct correlation between incarceration and crime. As Colorado’s Common Sense Institute found in a groundbreaking 2021 analysis, between 2008 and 2021, Colorado’s prison population declined 23% while the total number of annual crimes increased 47%. 

The data speaks for itself.

Bottom line: yes to providing more space in prison to keep offenders there; no to paroling them simply for lack of space.

Predictably, the usual voices in the misguided justice-reform movement — including among the budget committee’s dissenters — are objecting to the additional funding for prison beds.

“I want to know that some action is being taken to be more proactive about getting people who can be safely released (back) into the community or into community corrections,” said Sen. Judy Amabile, D-Boulder, “…before we just agree every year to vote for more beds.”

Senator, too many of those who already have been “safely released into the community” over the years have relapsed into a life of crime. Plenty of them have committed terrible, violent crimes. Don’t you think it’s time the legislature prioritize the public’s safety, for a change?