APRIL 10, 2025 | NEWS | By Margaret Freeman and Olivia Link
On Monday, March 7, the Colorado College Prison Abolition Project gave a presentation to students about the new Public Safety Budget for the City of Colorado Springs with the local nonprofit Voces Unidas for Justice.
The goal of this presentation was to educate the public about incarceration rates in Colorado, presenting their claim that this budget is not addressing crucial safety concerns within the greater Colorado Springs community. Junior Grace Nguyen was joined by representatives from Voces Unidas for Justice, project coordinator Rhiannon Moon and community leader Angelina Martinez to discuss the issue.
Colorado Springs Mayor Yemi Mobolade presented the updated budget to City Council on Oct. 7, 2024. The budget was approved by City Council in November. The General Fund budget is $440,037,344 and will be used to increase public safety on many fronts, including the addition of 20 new police officers to the force, continued funding for the Homeless Outreach Program and funding to replace police and fire department emergency vehicles.
Colorado College’s positionality to the carceral system is rather unique – according to presenters, we are located among the single largest concentration of correctional facilities in the United States, as there are 11 state and federal prisons within a 50-mile radius, including one maximum security facility in Cañon City.
According to the Prison Policy Initiative, Colorado has an incarceration rate that is five times higher than all of Canada, and the state imprisons women at a higher rate than the national one. El Paso, Denver, Arapahoe, Jefferson and Adams counties have 65% of the state’s incarcerated community while only being home to 55% of the state’s population. El Paso county has a carceral rate of 325 per 100,000 people and Colorado Springs has rate of 380 per 100,000.
The incarceration rates for women in Colorado are also much higher than in the rest of the US. 149 women out of every 100,000 are incarcerated, while only 133 out of 100,000 are incarcerated in the rest of the country.
In November, Colorado passed Proposition 128, which requires certain violent offenders to serve at least 85% of their sentence before they become eligible for parole, which will cost taxpayers an estimated 12 to 28 million dollars a year. This comes along with Proposition 130, which aims to increase the benefits for the families of officers killed in the line of duty and allocates $350 million to recruit, train and retain police officers.
A nationwide survey conducted by the Alliance for Safety and Justice asked survivors of violent crimes what they believed to be the most effective way to prevent repeat crimes. Of those polled, 40% said mental health or addiction treatment was the best solution, 28% recommended job training and placement programs and only 24% supported longer prison sentences.
While support for rehabilitation and community-based programs continues to grow, policy has not reflected this shift. The city of Colorado Springs has decided to proceed with the construction of a new police training facility, using Taxpayer Bill of Rights (TABOR) refunds and public taxes to do so, despite the measure being rejected by voters in 2023. The facility is expected to cost 12.5 to 21 million. “The only detox center we have in El Paso County is in the jail,” said Martinez.
Moon explained that the “police budget has doubled in the last 10 years… but the crime reduction is not happening.” In 2024, the average wait time for an emergency was 23 minutes, 44 seconds, and has only increased in recent years.
Despite calls from groups like Voces Unidas for Justice and the Colorado College Prison Abolition Project, the Public Safety Budget will not fund additional mental health services, violence prevention programs or other measures aimed at preventing crime. Instead, the money will help employ more police officers, purchase new police transportation, and increase compensation for police and fire employees.