Ban Colo. Private Prisons: Dem. Atty General Candidate Dougherty

BOULDER, CO -- Career prosecutor Michael Dougherty, a Democratic candidate in the 2018 race for Colorado Atty. General, has a proposal for the private prisons that house 20 percent of Colorado inmates: Close them down and transfer control to the Colorado Dept. of Corrections. Dougherty, a JeffCo prosecutor and adjunct professor at CU Boulder, published an essay on Medium.com urging Colorado to get out of the private prison business.

Three private prisons operate in Colorado. Two of them, Bent County Correctional Facility and Crowley County Correctional Facility — are owned by Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), a publicly traded company, headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, Dougherty writes. Dougherty says the prison industry is wildly profitable, paying CCA's CEO a $3 million salary, compared to the Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Corrections, who earns an annual salary of approximately $200,000.

Dougherty said in the essay that private prisons undermine confidence in the criminal justice system and Colorado private prisons have been found failing in requirements for work programs, academic opportunities, mental health and substance abuse and pre-release programs.

"Private prisons have a perverse incentive to house criminals for longer periods of time and to set them up for recidivism — to turn inmates into repeat customers," Dougherty wrote.

"Private prisons frequently exist in Colorado’s rural communities and are a welcome, needed source of local employment. To protect these jobs, communities become beholden to these corporations, even though private prisons — including some in Colorado — often prove unprofitable and eventually close," Dougherty wrote. "Instead of getting further into bed with the private prison corporations, we should be looking for ways to transfer these facilities to CDOC control. Getting out of the private prison business does not have to mean shutting down these facilities. But we must get the notion of profit out of the equation."

Dougherty said if he's elected AG, he will work to transfer Colorado's private prisons to CDOC control.

Read Dougherty's essay here.

Image via Michael Dougherty for AG