A handwritten note on Judy Corcoran’s fridge lists everything she planned to bring to the family’s big Thanksgiving gathering: apple juice, orange juice, champagne and bloody mary mix.
But the 83-year-old never made it there. She went out for her usual morning walk on Sept. 14, and was stabbed to death by an attacker who police say was a Colorado parolee.
Five months later, Corcoran’s Thanksgiving note is still mounted to the refrigerator, and her apartment looks like she could come back at any moment, said her daughter, Monique Whitney. Her mother was stubborn, kind and wise. Her presence was like a warm blanket wrapped around you, Whitney said.
As she’s learned more about the man accused of killing her mother, Whitney has grown angry. Months before the attack, the man’s parole officer had argued that he should go back to prison after he was convicted of drunk driving and missed drug tests and check-ins that were part of his parole on an aggravated robbery conviction.
But the state parole board overruled the officer, and the man was free for just six months before police say he killed Corcoran and a man hours apart in unprovoked attacks in northwest Denver.
“I just wonder, how can someone who is on parole… and continues to be messing up, how is he still out and about?” Whitney said. “I’m angry at the system. I don’t feel too much anger at him directly. The fact is he shouldn’t have been where he was in the first place to do any harm to anybody.”
Parole violations in Colorado have dropped by more than 50% over the last six years, driven by sweeping declines in technical violations around drug and alcohol use. Parolees who test positive for drugs or alcohol or who skip mandatory drug tests are much less likely to be sent back to prison now than they were six years ago.
The decline is part of a years-long effort by lawmakers and reformers to keep parolees out of prison and redirect those who struggle with substance abuse into treatment when they relapse, instead of into custody. Advocates hail the shift as progress that helps parolees better reenter society by reducing punitive prison stays and increasing support for those coming out of prison.
But critics say the changes have hobbled parole officers’ ability to keep both parolees and the public safe, and that long waits for limited inpatient substance abuse treatment leave parolees stuck without help. Parole officers say they have little ability to hold parolees responsible, even when they commit new crimes.
“We just shake a finger at them, but that’s it,” said one parole officer who spoke to The Denver Post on the condition of anonymity to avoid professional retaliation.
Colorado parole officers recorded about 37,800 parole violations for drug-related or alcohol-related technical violations in 2018, compared to just 15,600 such violations in 2023 — a 59% drop, according to data obtained from the Colorado Department of Corrections through an open records request. All other types of technical violations fell by about 40% in that time frame.
“It’s not because they stopped using drugs, I promise you,” the parole officer said. “…I’ve got people violating 10, 12, times a month. They’ll sit there and tell you, ‘Yeah, I used fentanyl today,’ and there’s not a thing you can do…That’s why parole officers just quit writing (violations) altogether.”
Parole violations can lead to a person’s parole being revoked, meaning they are sent back to prison. The decision to revoke parole is made by the Colorado State Board of Parole, not by parole officers, and the nine-member board can also choose to continue a person’s parole despite violations, sometimes with new restrictions.
Overall, total parole violations declined 52% between 2018 and 2023, sliding from 57,000 to 27,000, the data shows. Violations related to drug and alcohol use made up between 57% and 71% of all violations annually across the six-year span, averaging about two-thirds of all technical violations.
The decline in parole violations coincided with a sharp increase in the number of parolees who absconded while on parole — that is, parolees whose whereabouts were unknown, failed to report to their parole officers, or who moved without permission. The percentage of absconders rose from 7% of all parolees in the 2018 fiscal year to 14% in the 2023 fiscal year, according to data published by the Colorado Department of Corrections.
Officials with the Department of Corrections declined to be interviewed by The Post about the reason for the decline in violations, the impact on parolees and prisoners, options parole officers have when a parolee tests positive for drugs, and how policies have changed over the years. A spokeswoman for the department declined requests for interviews over a nearly three-week span and demanded the newspaper send questions in writing, which The Post declined to do.
Michael Tessean, director of the state parole board, also declined to be interviewed and requested The Post send written questions.
Department of Corrections spokeswoman Alondra Gonzalez said in a statement that the agency takes a variety of steps to support “the successful reintegration of individuals back into society.”
“It is important to recognize that a reduction in total parole technical violations is a nuanced, complex issue,” she said in the statement. “As such it can be attributed to many variables.”
But others pointed to years of focused legislative reform, efforts to change the culture in the Department of Corrections and growing recognition among parole officers that relapses are part of recovery as factors driving the drop.
“This is good news,” said Christie Donner, executive director of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition. “…(Technical violations were) driving tens of millions in re-incarceration expenses without a lot of benefit in terms of stabilizing the person so they are more likely to succeed when they were re-released, or in terms of any kind of public safety benefit. So it was sort of a lose-lose proposition, but it was easy, and it was familiar.”
Culture shift in parole
In the years Dominique Vodicka was on parole in the early 2000s, she lost track of the number of times she was sent back to prison for a six-month stint because she’d failed drug tests or didn’t report in to her parole officer, violations that went hand-in-hand with each other, she said.
Her parole officers at the time — the years leading up to 2013 — would give her one or two chances after she tested positive for drugs, then write up a violation. Those violations led to her parole being revoked, and she was sent back to prison.
“Back then it was all about punishment,” she said. “…It didn’t help, but it could make things worse. You get stuck in that mental state, that lifestyle. When you go in for six months, there’s no time for treatment, no time for classes, no time for anything.”
Vodicka was sentenced to 16 years in prison in 2013, and got out again on parole in 2021. But this time, she was clean, and she found success by relying on a more robust network of support, she said. Now, she’s off parole and works as a peer support specialist at The Reentry Initiative, a Longmont nonprofit that supports parolees as they come out of prison.
She recently visited parole offices to offer a former prisoner’s perspective on a potential policy change, and ran into one of her old parole officers, a woman who had been a real stickler about violating Vodicka for positive drug tests.
“I saw her there and I looked at her and I was like, ‘I’ve changed a lot,’” Vodicka said. “And she looked at me and said, ‘So have I, and I’m sorry.’”
Vodicka and other advocates applaud what they see as a culture change within the Department of Corrections that has some parole officers looking at drug and alcohol use with a less punitive lens.
“A lot of parole officers have been educating themselves on addiction and what it is like to be an addict, and then attempting to help people on parole manage that, rather than just violate them and send them back to prison,” said Lara Arndt, re-entry program manager at Homeward Alliance, a nonprofit that supports parolees in Larimer and Jackson counties.
That shift was shaped by several law changes aimed at reducing the number of people sent back to prison in Colorado. Prior to 2019, parolees could be taken into custody for 30 to 90 days for committing a technical violation of parole — that is, if they violated the conditions of their parole but did not commit a new crime. Technical violations can include actions like failing a drug test, missing curfew, being purposely unemployed or visiting a liquor store.
In 2019, lawmakers largely ended that practice. Now, most parolees can be sent back only for a handful of technical parole violations: those that involve possession of a deadly weapon, refusing to comply with sex offender treatments, unlawful contact with a victim or tampering with an electronic monitoring device.
The number of parolees sent back to prison for technical violations of parole within three years of their release plummeted from 44% of offenders in 2009 to 14% in 2019, according to the Department of Corrections’ 2021 Statistical Report, the most recent available.
“That was the intent of the legislation: to ensure we are not filling our prisons and costing Colorado taxpayers additional dollars for small parole violations, but instead ensuring that people who are in prison deserve to be there,” said state Rep. Leslie Herod, a sponsor on the 2019 bill.
The number of people returned to prison or jail for new crimes also decreased, though not as dramatically. About 19% of people released from prison returned within three years because of a new crime in 2009, compared to 15% in 2019.
“Our recidivism looks really good right now, but it’s not that people are not reoffending,” the parole officer said. “Parole officers are pretty much forced to look the other way. Parolees have been told there are no consequences. Our hands are tied as parole officers.”
For the most part, parolees have to commit a new violent crime for their parole to be revoked, the officer said.
“I don’t want to send nobody back, but if it’s called for, then yeah, I might be saving their life or someone else’s life,” the parole officer said. “And parole officers are educated enough to know the kind of situation.”
Prosecutors are seeing parolees committing new crimes, said John Kellner, district attorney in the 18th Judicial District, which covers Arapahoe, Douglas, Elbert and Lincoln counties. Anecdotally, the number of such defendants seems to be on the rise, he said.
“I do think the pendulum has swung too far and too fast, in a way that is frankly putting our community at risk and setting up parolees for failure as well,” he said.
Parolees who commit technical violations should face punishment for breaking those rules, Kellner said.
“Those technical violations are intended to not only help people adapt back to society, but keep them on the right path to avoid interacting with the bad influences that put them on a justice system path to begin with, whether it is people or drugs or alcohol,” he said.
Parole officers do have punitive options for technical parole violations. Parolees can be still sent back to jail for up to 14 days under a policy once heralded as providing “sure and swift” consequences to parolees. That approach is less used now than it was several years ago, several people told The Post.
Jail stays are constrained by the number of beds available in local jails for such parole violators. In December, there were about 9,500 people on parole across the state, according to the Department of Corrections. Most were concentrated in Denver, Colorado Springs and Jefferson County, with just under 1,400 parolees supervised out of the Denver office in 2021, according to the Department of Corrections.
The Denver Sheriff Department sets aside 10 beds for people being held on parole holds, while the Jefferson County Jail has eight beds for such inmates. The Jefferson County Jail in 2023 took in 344 people who were jailed solely on parole violations, and each inmate stayed for an average of 12 days, spokeswoman Jacki Kelley said.
Access to treatment
Parole officers can send parolees to inpatient treatment as a condition of their parole, but that option has been limited by the availability of treatment, parole officers and others said. Parolees may have to wait weeks or months for an inpatient bed, and might participate only sporadically in outpatient, virtual treatment.
“I’ve had that (person) in my office where they needed to go yesterday, but because the beds are months out, there’s nothing we can do,” said Emily Kleeman, executive director of The Reentry Initiative.
One Colorado man who was released on parole in November 2022 has been arrested four times in the last eight months for possessing fentanyl and driving under the influence, court records show.
He’s been in once-a-week online treatment, but can’t get any other help, his mother said. She spoke with The Post on the condition of anonymity for her son and her, citing concerns about her safety and his privacy.
“My son has talked about getting help, but the parole officer does nothing,” she said. “I watch my son ask for help and ask for help. And I’ve asked for help for him. And nothing. It is very frustrating. Why can’t you guys sit here and tell me, ‘OK, we’ll violate his parole, we’ll put him in a 90-day rehab?”
She added she’d rather see her son go back to prison than continue to use with no help.
“I hate to say I want to see my son go back to jail,” she said. “But I don’t want to see him overdose.”
The number of people who died while on parole in Colorado inched up over the last decade and then spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic, Department of Correction data shows. Less than 1% of parolees died in the 2014 fiscal year, a figure that grew to 1.4% in the 2018 fiscal year and then to 2.3% in the 2022 fiscal year, the data shows. That’s an increase from 78 annual deaths to 203.
In the 2023 fiscal year, the number of deaths declined, with 1.8% of parolees — 155 people — dying on parole. One of those was Shawn Gray, a 48-year-old parolee who was hit by a driver and killed in August while riding a bicycle near an Interstate 25 on-ramp. He was a known chronic drug user, and had methamphetamine and fentanyl in his system when he died, his autopsy shows.
Parolees need access to substance abuse treatment, and poor access shouldn’t mean that parolees must go back to prison, Herod said.
“What we need to do is stop investing in incarceration as an answer to addiction and instead invest in treatment,” she said.
A stay in prison won’t stop someone from using drugs, but it can be a major setback in recovery, said 69-year-old parolee Kem Kershaw, who got out of prison in January.
“The prisons are full of drugs,” he said. “If you don’t get help before you go to prison, you’re not going to get help in prison.”
In the early 2000s, Kershaw returned to prison for about a year after providing a positive drug test while on parole. Before he was sent back, he had a job, a place to stay and a car, he said.
“As a result of being violated on the dirty UA, I lost all of that,” he said, referring to the urine test that showed drug use. “I basically had to start over.”
Kershaw finally found the motivation to get clean when his father died in 2008.
“I got tired of going to prison for it,” he said. “I just spent entirely too much of my life in jails and prisons and when my father passed way, I felt he would be so ashamed of me, so I started to change my life.”
Growing absconder population
In the last decade, the percentage of Colorado parolees who absconded from parole has more than doubled, growing from 6% of parolees in the 2014 fiscal year to more than 14% so far in the 2024 fiscal year.
The absconder population has been slowly growing for years, but jumped in the 2020 fiscal year, Department of Corrections data shows.
That year, lawmakers created a new crime of “unauthorized absence” for people who are on intensive supervised parole and leave without permission or try to remove an ankle bracelet.
Before, such people were charged with felony escape. But the newly created crime of unauthorized absence is in most cases a misdemeanor.
Parolees can be returned to prison either for technical violations of the rules of their parole, or if they are arrested and charged with a new crime. An arrest for unauthorized absence falls into the latter category.
In Denver, the district attorney’s office won’t file that misdemeanor charge, according to information provided by Colorado Workers for Innovative New Solutions, the union for parole officers. Prosecutors in Denver filed only 24 counts of misdemeanor unauthorized escape in 2022 and 2023, according to records provided by the Colorado Judicial Department.
In the Fourth Judicial District, which includes El Paso and Teller counties, prosecutors filed 235 misdemeanor unauthorized absence counts in that same time period, the records show. There were about 1,900 parolees being supervised out of the Colorado Springs office in 2021, compared to about 1,400 supervised out of Denver, according to the Department of Corrections.
“After 2020, when the Colorado legislature changed the definition of ‘custody or confinement’ and created a… misdemeanor for most ‘unauthorized absences,’ we redirected our limited resources to focus on felonies and other serious crimes,” Denver DA spokesman Matt Jablow said in a statement.
Statewide, prosecutors filed 973 unauthorized absence cases in 2022 and 1,134 in 2023, the records show. Some of those cases include multiple counts of unauthorized absence.
The misdemeanor crime can be punished with up to three months in jail.
Prior to the law change, parolees charged with felony escape in the 18th Judicial District were routinely returned to prison for the remainder of their original sentence, along with an additional year or two on the escape charge, said Kellner, the district attorney.
“It used to be very well known, and I think it was a strong deterrent, that if you walked away, if you escaped from community corrections or the halfway house, that you were going back to prison for longer,” Kellner said.
Improved support
The shift away from punitive responses to parole violations has been coupled with new funding to programs aimed at supporting parolees as they re-enter society.
Since 2014, the state has funneled millions of dollars into an effort known as WAGEES — Work and Gain Education and Employment Skills — which funds community organizations across the state that provide practical support for people during the first year after they are released from prison.
After his most recent release from prison in January, Kershaw connected with Homeward Alliance, and the Fort Collins nonprofit has helped him with rent, gas money and connections to resources for veterans. He’s been clean since 2008 and is confident he’ll complete his parole in December without problems.
“They have so many programs and resources,” he said. “They give you moral and mental support. They go over and above.”
That extra support helps to stabilize parolees, who are then less likely to violate their parole conditions or re-offend, said Donner, director of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition.
“We’re not turning a blind eye to the struggle and potential public safety issues that can come into play… it’s a both-and,” she said. “We want to be attentive and not blow it off, but also at the same time we don’t want to just revoke people to prison because it’s easier, and in three, five months they come back out and nothing is different and they just start the cycle all over again with a revolving door.”
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