My first cellie when I came to prison was a 73 year old man. Mr. Montoya had escaped from a Colorado halfway house in 1982 and subsequently stabbed a man in a bar fight in Wyoming and got 30 years. After that, he’d been returned to Colorado to finish his sentence here. How an old man, bent over and needing a walker to traverse even the short distances to medical or chow hall, Mr. Montoya was being let out of prison. One of the few prisoners to see the street at his first parole eligibility date, he was not enthusiastic about the prospect of his upcoming release on parole, something less than ‘freedom.’ Whatever family he’d once had were long since dead. He was being returned to a community he was tied to only by some ancient crime with a parole plan that called for things like regular attendance at AA meetings. Afflicted with diabetes, and having suffered two heart attacks in the preceding decade, drinking was the least of Mr. Montoya’s worries.

Maybe at one time he’d dreamt of getting out and drinking a cold beer, of making love again to a woman, of having a car or a bike. Those dreams had died decades ago. How he wondered how he would negotiate getting to his medical appointments in a small town in southern Colorado with no public transportation, wondered where he would lay his head when the $100 in gate money they hive him runs out, and he uses up the one week motel voucher. Barely able to negotiate the yard, his eyes so bad he could no longer read, his mind itself stating to fail, Mr. Montoya was terrified by the prospect of his impeding release. There was no one and nothing on the other side of the fence of the penitentiary he cared about anymore.

By Tom Gomez

At only 23 Gilbert ‘Cash’ Gonzales has already spent more than ten years of his life in the juvenile and adult prison system. Now Gonzales is facing new charges for escape in Adams County. Those charges, stemming from Gonzales’ decision to walk away from a halfway house, may result in his being sentenced to serve as much as eight additional years should Adams County prosecute him as a habitual offender. Despite the fact that Gilbert was gone only 15 hours, Colorado law allows him to be charged with felony escape after as little as two hours, and gives the DA up to three years to bring the charge. Gilbert learned about Adams County’s decision to prosecute him ten days before his scheduled release from prison, and won’t know if the DA will press a habitual criminal charge against him until he is arraigned and has a chance to meet with his public defender.

Sadly Gilbert’s situation is not unique. According to figures supplied to the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition by DOC itself in its monthly population and capacity report, 285 of the 2,030 prisoners housed in Colorado’s community correctional facilities were returned to custody as of January 31, 2010. Many, like Gonzales, will face new felony charges for little more than essentially technical violations of their placement conditions. By contrast of 779 prisoners on I.S.P. (Intensive Supervised Parole) only six were returned to custody during the same period. Meanwhile the decade Gonzales has already spent in custody has now cost the state over $300,000 and there is no end in sight. If Gilbert were to spend the next eight years behind the walls of Colorado’s State prisons, plus and additional three years of mandatory parole, the cost of his incarceration will have run to over $500,000. By then he will be 35 years old and his chances of being able live outside the walls of a prison may be slim to none.

by Tom Gomez

The holiday season is an unhappy season for many prisoners who are far from home and family. For me, and no doubt many others here who have neither, it is a time for reflection, a time to take stock of ourselves and resolve to make changes in our lives. That is even more true for at least some of those here who have children of their own, children who are waiting on the outside for their parent to get out.

To be sure, that's not everyone here, some prisoners glorify lives of crime and violence, addiction and alcoholism, at least to me. I doubt they do the same on the phone with their 7-year old, or an aging parent they might not see again when they get out. No one dreams of being a convict when they grow up.

So if people don't like prison, why do so many convicts come back over and over again? In Colorado, 70% of paroled convicts return to prison, 27% with new criminal charges. Roughly 50% of those to be released from prison return on a new criminal case. Finishing parole, or 'killing your number' makes it no less likely that you'll be back. So why is it that while 1 in 136 people in our society is in prison, despite the US having the highest rate of incarceration per capita in the world, people here in prison just can't seem to get out and stay out?

Many legislators feel that the problem is that convicts are genetically inferior to the wider population. Backed up by an army of psychologists and social workers, they find the offender to be biologically different from themselves and talk about treating the offender's 'anti-social personality disorder', about the 'disease model of addiction'. They seldom, if ever, talk about poverty.

A rule change by the Colorado State Department of Corrections could mean offenders with already long sentences, mostly for drug offenses, will be incarcerated longer. Under the new rule, which went into effect on October 1st, 2009, prisoners required to participate in DOC's intensive 9 – 12 month therapeutic community program for drugs and alcohol will not be eligible to do so until they are within 8 years of their mandatory release date.

Under Colorado statute, prisoners are eligible for early release (discretionary parole) after serving 50% of their sentence, and receive 10 days a month earned time if they are charged with a non-violent offense. Violent offenders receive only 6 days a month 'earned time', and are required to serve 75% of their sentences before being paroled. For a non-violent offender serving a 30-year stretch, that means that he or she is parole eligible after 12 years, if they have complied with all conditions of confinement.

In practice, however, such discretionary paroles are seldom granted. Even the Governor's plan to rease prisoners 6 months before their mandatory release date has run into fierce, and very public, opposition from the parole board itself, which remands prisoners to their mandatory release dates more than 90% of the time. On a 30-year sentence that means spending 23 years behind bars.