Democrats propose giving $3,000 to people leaving prison

Colorado Democrats are proposing a new cash assistance plan that would give people leaving prison up to $3,000 for “basic life expenses.”

Lawmakers introduced Senate Bill 12 in the Colorado Senate last week. The legislation proposes a pilot program in the state Department of Corrections that would provide up to $3,000 to “persons who enroll and participate in workforce services or training programs after incarceration” for a one-year period. Currently, people leaving Colorado prisons receive just $100.

Proponents of the bill say the program would help solve the revolving door for inmates in Colorado, which has one of the worst recidivism rates in the country, according to a 2018 analysis by the Virginia Department of Corrections. About half of those released from Colorado’s state prisons are reincarcerated within three years. Supporters of SB12 argue that the proposed cash assistance would be enough to prevent people leaving prison from returning.

More than 7,000 people are released from Colorado prisons every year, which means that if every single one of them were eligible for $3,000, the pilot program could cost taxpayers up to $21 million. The bill’s sponsors have not yet detailed how many people they expect to qualify for the assistance.

“The reality—$100 and a bus ticket—is not enough. People want the resources to not go back,” state Senator James Coleman, a co-sponsor of the bill, told digital magazine Bolts last week. “We want to see people able to get out and utilize the dollars on housing, on workforce development, on opportunities to get jobs.”

Newsweek reached out to Coleman via email for comment.

A New York–based nonprofit, the Center for Employment Opportunities, is leading the Colorado effort. It says that its Returning Citizens Stimulus program—which distributed up to $2,750 to more than 10,000 people leaving prison in 2020—showed that those who received checks were more likely to find and keep employment and housing and less likely to return to prison.

If the bill passes, Colorado would become the first state to codify such a program into state law. The legislation requires the Department of Corrections to partner with a nonprofit organization to administer the program, perform an annual survey of the program’s recipients and produce an annual report that would be submitted to state lawmakers.

It’s estimated that it costs Colorado $47,000 on average per year to house and feed someone in a state prison. So supporters of SB12 argue that while the program could be costly, it would still be less than what the state currently pays to keep someone incarcerated.

But some have raised questions about whether such a program could send the wrong message about incarceration.

“To hand cold hard cash to ex-cons—many with an extensive history of substance addiction—sends them a convoluted message and practically invites them back down the path that led them to prison in the first place,” The Gazette’s editorial board wrote in an op-ed Tuesday.

“The money tempts recipients with all the usual bad choices and rewards them for their time behind bars—as if society owed them a debt rather than the other way around,” the Colorado Springs newspaper said. “It amounts to subsidizing convicts for having led lives of crime.”

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