El Paso County district attorney details caseload trends, victim services and resource pressures

District Attorney Michael Allen told the El Paso County Board of County Commissioners on Tuesday that his office is not seeking additional critical‑needs funding in the 2026 budget but warned that administrative burdens, statutory changes and rising juvenile violent crime are creating operational pressures.

Allen, the elected district attorney for the Fourth Judicial District, summarized caseload trends, staffing, victim services and prosecution priorities during the county’s second budget hearing. “The DA's office is created by Colorado Constitution and state statute,” Allen said, describing the office’s role in enforcing state law across El Paso and Teller counties.

He said the office currently employs about 259 full‑time equivalents, and that volunteers played a substantive role over the past year: “We’ve got 56 volunteers over the last year that produced 9,275.79 hours of donated work,” Allen said. He described diversion and mediation programs that the office uses to reduce court burden and route low‑risk offenders to treatment and education: juvenile diversion had an 85.6 percent success rate and adult diversion an 89 percent success rate, Allen said.

Why it matters: Allen framed his briefing as both taxpayer‑facing transparency and an explanation of operational constraints that will affect public safety outcomes. He highlighted areas where the…