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Officials warn placement restrictions would shift treatment costs back to prisons as inmate population grows
Summary
DOCR briefed the committee on proposed placement‑authority changes in a pending bill, the fiscal uncertainty if transitional placement is curtailed, and the department's current use of county contracts and limited out‑of‑state swaps to manage capacity.
Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Director Colby Braun told the committee that a pending bill (discussed in the hearing as “20 one‑twenty 8”) contains language, cited to section 10 in committee discussion, that would limit DOCR’s placement authority for transitional facilities and remove those programs from the statutory definition of confinement. Braun said the change would restrict the department’s current ability to place people in transitional settings and could require prisons to assume more treatment delivery.
Braun told legislators the bill’s draft language would, if enacted as presented, prevent the department from using specific transitional facilities ‘‘as inmate placement’’ and would constrain the parole board’s discretion by requiring longer in‑custody terms before parole eligibility in some cases. He warned that the bill could shift treatment that currently occurs in transitional facilities into higher‑cost prison settings and that a portion of the fiscal impact depends on how the parole board chooses to exercise discretion under the new language.
Committee members pressed how the state would handle capacity if transitional placements were curtailed. Braun and other witnesses said DOCR already pays counties to hold state prisoners under contract and that the department had budgeted about $16,000,000 for county jail housing in the coming biennium plus roughly $1,500,000 to try to bring programming to those county facilities. Braun said DOCR also uses limited interstate swaps (about 30 people were cited as presently housed out of state under swap arrangements) rather than standing out‑of‑state contracts.
Lawmakers and department officials discussed tradeoffs between warehousing people and providing programming. Braun said the state’s transitional facilities and community placement tools are intended to provide treatment and reentry preparation, and that removing those options by statute would likely increase in‑prison treatment burdens and fiscal costs. The committee did not record a formal vote on placement legislation in this hearing.
