STERLING, Colo — According to the Colorado Department of Corrections, within three years of an inmate’s release, almost 50% end up back in prison. A new program at Sterling Correctional Facility is helping improve that statistic.
“This is a part of reform of the system,” said Dante Lamar Owens, a resident at the Sterling Correctional Facility.
Owens is chairperson and one of the creators of Sterling’s Reimagine Program.
“This is a community-based pre-release/re-entry program that's actually led by long-term residents here at Sterling Correctional Facility. And what we do is prepare guys to reintegrate into society from incarceration. We focus on attitude, behavior and substance abuse problems,” Owens said. “Also, we teach accountability and responsibility for their lives and for, you know, being inside prisons, for every choice and decision they make.”
Sterling Correctional Facility resident Tyrone Walker leads education and program development.
“We make sure they can at least take certain classes or at least check that box when they get out. There's other educational things. Like, we were trying to work with colleges and whatnot. We're still in the process of that program development,” Walker said. “So, the best thing we can do is try to have an impact on the individual before they leave.”
Release day is a day Walker and Owens may never see, as both men are serving life sentences. Most of the leaders of the program are serving life sentences.
“It took a long time to deal with the time we had. You know, we come here, our life is shattered, and we spend the first 10 or 15 years picking up all the broken pieces and trying to figure out where to go with that. And then when we get there, there's a debt owed to the people that come behind us,” Walker said. “Lifers, we don't have the ability to get out. So you know, we see things in here take a turn for the worse, like maybe with drugs or whatever it might be. And we don't want these people getting out to run into our loved ones or anybody else with those issues.”
Owens said a few days ago, an inmate thanked him for the program.
“I was standing on the tier, and this guy walked up and gave me a paper. I didn't know what it was. And he just told me that it was his parole papers, he got paroled. And he still got 10 years left on his sentence,” Owens said. “He used to get a lot of write-ups, he was a management problem. But then his first time up for parole, he got paroled.”
Owens said they’re also seeing impacts in other areas.
“We have like a 90% drop in reportables. And then the people that’s got moved forward, we’ve had at least, like, 50 people now that have progressed out of the program… and then the 10 people that got paroled,” Owens said.
State Senator James Coleman, D-Denver, is sponsoring Senate Bill 23-067 to expand the program to include job training.
“They're able to have individuals go through this program, and then go away from prison and then not come back within three to six months, which is usually how we determine whether or not a recidivism program is working,” Coleman said. “So we're excited about figuring out a way to provide some funding to address this issue in this bill, but also save a ton of money as a state on making sure that we can put those funds into our kids, put those funds into individuals who need jobs, who need housing, who need transportation. It's better for us to invest in them to stay out of prison than for us to invest in them to stay in prison.”
Coleman said it costs about $50,000 a year to house an inmate, but inmates who work can earn their own money and pay income taxes.
“The cost for the state over decades of not providing resources for individuals to get out and stay out of prison has cost us significantly more than anything this bill would be,” the state senator said.
Owens and Walker said if the bill passes, they look forward to additional support from the state.
“With the program, I would like it to be a highly effective, self-sustaining machine,” Walker said. “I would like the program to literally walk a guy out the door and to that help. We don't want them going somewhere and falling back into the same situation.”
Walker and Owens said helping one inmate has the potential to impact others within that person’s circle of influence.
“Helping his kids, if you got kids. It's helping his mom, you know, his parents. It’s helping his community when he gets out,” Owens said.
The bill would also require the Colorado Department of Corrections to decide by 2028 whether to expand the program to other correctional facilities.
