A new study breaks down where people in Colorado prisons come from

COLORADO (KRDO) -- The Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition (CCJRC) and the Prison Policy Initiative released a report that provides an in-depth look at where people incarcerated in Colorado state prisons come from.

The study, Where people in prison come from: The geography of mass incarceration in Colorado, includes local data for Denver, Aurora, and El Paso County. This serves as a foundation for advocates, organizers, policymakers, data journalists, academics, and others to analyze the impact of mass incarceration on various communities. It also provides a roadmap where greater investment in community development is needed to improve community wellbeing.

The data and report were made possible by the state’s landmark 2020 law ending prison gerrymandering. It requires state and local governments to count incarcerated people as residents of their home communities rather than their prison locations when drawing legislative districts.

Colorado is one of more than a dozen states and 200 local governments that have addressed the practice of “prison gerrymandering,” which gives disproportional political clout to legislative districts in which prisons are located, at the expense of other districts. In total, roughly half the country now lives in a jurisdiction that has taken action to address prison gerrymandering.

“The nation’s 40-year failed experiment with mass incarceration harms each and every one of us. This analysis shows that while some communities are disproportionately impacted by this failed policy, nobody escapes the damage it causes,” said Emily Widra, Senior Research Analyst at the Prison Policy Initiative. “Our report is just the beginning. We’re making this data available so others can further examine how geographic incarceration trends correlate with other problems communities face.”

The CCJRC highlights the following finding from the report.

• Every Colorado legislative district, and nearly every county, is impacted where a portion of its population is incarcerated in state prisons, however, the degree of that impact varies wildly.
• Two communities with large Hispanic, Latino, or Native American populations, Alamosa and Bent, have some of the highest imprisonment rates in the state.
• There are dramatic differences in incarceration rates within communities. For example, in Denver, residents of the Elyria-Swansea neighborhood are 20 times more likely to be imprisoned than residents of nearby Washington Park West.

“This seminal report is both appalling and not surprising as over-policing and mass incarceration has targeted low-income communities and communities of color for generations,” said Christie Donner of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition. “We aren’t facing a crisis of crime, we are facing a crisis of neglect and lack of investment in communities of color and we hope this report will mobilize impacted residents and their elected officials to embrace community development as a public safety strategy.”

The counties with the most people in state prison at the time of the 2020 census are Denver (2,712), El Paso (2,378), and Adams (1,599).

The CCJRC says that the report includes studies that show incarceration rates correlate with a variety of negative outcomes, including higher rates of asthma, depression, lower standardized test scores, reduced life expectancy, and more.

The counties with the highest state prison incarceration rates are Alamosa (577 per 100,000 residents), Pueblo (472 per 100,000 residents), and Bent (465 per 100,000 residents). For comparison, San Juan and Mineral counties have the lowest prison incarceration rates, with no residents in prison.

To read the full report, click here.