Denver City Council’s Health and Safety Committee was briefed July 30 on the city’s community corrections programs, which officials described as three distinct models — pretrial services, residential halfway houses and home detention — that provide structured alternatives to incarceration and support reentry. Greg Morrow, Director of Community Corrections for the Department of Safety, told the committee the programs serve thousands of people and produce measurable outcomes but face a persistent shortage of beds and months‑long waits for placement.

The briefing, which Commissioners said helps the public understand non‑policing elements of public safety, outlined how pretrial staff interview arrestees and produce risk assessments for judges, how residential programs offer 24‑hour structured supervision and step‑down services, and how home detention uses electronic monitoring as a sentencing alternative in county court cases. "With limited exception, everybody that's arrested has a fundamental constitutional right to be released on bail. The exception is first‑degree murder," Morrow said, describing the legal constraints around pretrial detention under Colorado law.

The briefing emphasized why the topic matters locally: Denver officials said the city has fewer community corrections beds than it did in 2019, leaving people who are eligible for residential placement waiting in jail or in state prison. Morrow said the city currently operates about 273 beds in city‑run and partner programs and that wait times are typically four to eight months; he reported roughly 50 people in the Denver jail and more than 90 in the Department of Corrections waiting for beds. "We're a third of our capacity from 2019," Morrow said.

Officials reviewed program details and outcomes. Residential programs serve people with high needs: Morrow reported that about 78 percent of participants have identified mental‑health needs, 71 percent report current problems with drugs or alcohol, 43 percent have a history of housing instability, and roughly 70 percent assess at high risk to recidivate. He said less than 2 percent of residential participants were terminated for commission of a new crime while in program and that 59 percent completed the residential program successfully in calendar year 2024. The city’s residential programs collected about $120,000 toward victim restitution over the prior 12 months, staff said.

Stephanie Robertson, Residential Services Manager for Denver Community Corrections, described individual successes and the programs’ person‑centered approach: "Many of our folks have a number of risk factors and if they had five major risk factors and they were able to address four, I would still argue that there's been some success," she said. Robertson and Morrow also said Denver has shifted away from large private, for‑profit operators since 2019 and now runs several programs directly, including the Impact Center (48 beds), Project Elevate (about 60 beds for women) and the Moore Center (about 90 beds). One longstanding private provider, Independence House, continues to operate a 75‑bed program that primarily serves DOC referrals.

Pretrial services staff, represented in the briefing by Aubrey Cote, said the unit produces roughly 11,000 court reports annually (about 30 per day) and that the average daily pretrial supervision population is roughly 2,000, rising to about 2,300 in 2024. Morrow said about 18 to 20 percent of people on pretrial supervision have an electronic monitoring condition. On research into electronic monitoring, Cote discussed a partnership with Arizona State University and preliminary analytic work with the city. She said preliminary results suggest GPS monitoring has not been associated with increased new crime when compared to those not on GPS, but that analysis is ongoing and one final data link from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation was outstanding at the time of the briefing. "Preliminarily, we are not seeing GPS new crimes having an impact whether they're on GPS or not," Cote said.

Committee members asked for clarifications and additional data. Councilmember Kevin Flynn asked where the 41 percent of residential participants who did not complete the program fit in the outcomes data; Morrow and Robertson said that terminations included a small share for new crimes (under 2 percent), unauthorized absences or returns to custody for repeated rule violations, and that some people later reenter the programs and achieve stability. Council President Pro Tem Diana Romero Campbell asked whether immigration enforcement or ICE had affected court appearances; Morrow said that question was primarily for the courts but noted city staff do not collect immigration status when providing services. "That's really a better question posed to the courts," Morrow said.

Councilmember Gonzalez Gutierrez asked about the community corrections board’s composition and racial/ethnic representation in the programs. Morrow said Denver’s board has 21 members appointed by the mayor and confirmed by council, including representatives from the district attorney and public defender offices, the sheriff’s department, adult and juvenile probation, victim services and human services. He said program demographics roughly mirror the jail population and that the department would provide a slide with point‑in‑time jail demographics to allow comparison.

Officials described bottlenecks to expanding capacity: identifying properties that meet zoning for residential treatment, securing funding to purchase and renovate buildings, and operationalizing services. Morrow said the city has purchased a former CoreCivic property on Dahlia Street and hopes to reopen it after renovation, with a target of entering service in 2026 if resources and construction allow.

The committee did not take votes on the briefing. Staff said they would follow up with requested slides on jail demographics and the ASU/CBI research linkage. The meeting adjourned following the Q&A.