"This is a group that's been highly manipulative," he adds, "and we are holding people accountable. Prisons are run by drugs, sex, violence, rape and intimidation, gambling. That constitutes the total frame of reference. You don't look at your emotions there. You have a criminal mask. We break through that mask."
Tom Brewster, executive director of Addiction Research and Treatment Services at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and co-founder of the umbrella organization for Peer 1, Signal Behavioral Health Network, adds, "They've been institutionalized, and they're now in an environment that's fluid and ever-changing. They have to make decisions when they've never had a chance to do that before. It takes a place like this to re-shape and re-parent them, to help them deal with freedom and eventually find jobs, work, pay taxes and become good citizens."
Josh Beckius in 2000, seven years after the murder of Dayton Leslie James.
Dayton Leslie James
Related Content
More About
Residents work on projects intended as a way of making amends for their crimes and giving back to the community. They go on AIDS walks, work with Habitat for Humanity and put together food baskets. "We have a choir that visits nursing homes," Gaipa says. "And every month we pass the hat and make a donation to Save the Children."
Beckius has completed one year of his two-year stay. He will soon move to a house on the Peer 1 grounds with some twenty other residents for approximately ninety days. After that, he will be allowed to rent his own place, living under supervision and wearing an ankle bracelet. He comes up for parole in 2013. Whether he makes parole or not, he'll continue his work with Peer 1. Any slip could send him back to prison to serve the entire length of his sentence — which means he would not be released until he's well into his fifties. The daily schedule is strict. Every morning, Beckius gets up at 3:30 a.m. and takes an almost two-hour bus ride to his job. Almost every evening, he participates in Peer 1 programs. After that, he helps the other residents clean up the house and prepares for the next day.
Despite the tightrope he still has to walk, Beckius appears steady and cheerful, grateful even for the restrictions. And he swears he'll do well with the chance he's been given. "Every day that I live my life is a day of redemption for me," he says. "I've done so much horrible stuff and created so many victims and the ripple effect of treating everyone around me like they didn't exist or they didn't matter. Today that's not the case. I'm ashamed and embarrassed for the way I've lived my life. It hurts me that I've created so much hurt, and I refuse to do that. I have the opportunity to be out here, to make amends for all the wrongs that I've done and prove people wrong — that a hopeless individual can become a person that other people are proud to know."
*****
Ex-convicts are famous for manipulating the truth, but several people who understand a few things about corrections are optimistic about Josh Beckius. One is former state legislator Don Marostica, who visited several prisons as part of his duties when he was a member of the Joint Budget Committee. He had heard about Beckius, and asked to meet him during a visit to Sterling; he ended up speaking on Beckius's behalf to the clemency board. "I felt good about the kid," he says. "Everybody gets bad breaks in life. I grew up as a tough kid; I was one of the bullies. In junior high, I ran the school." He laughs. "I've been fooled before, but I had a pretty good gut reaction about him."
"It's a case that has stayed on my mind," says attorney Neil Silver. "I do think he is one of those people who were let down by the system. Hopefully he's not holding it against the system, and at this point, it appears that the system is doing what it can to help him get his life together."
"He impressed us," comments Gaipa. "He wanted something different. He made a commitment somewhere."
"He's got empathy," agrees Brewster, "and concern for others. These are innate strengths." Beckius carries the hopes of many on his shoulders, among them his devoted grandparents and Tim and Kathy. But perhaps most important, Dayton James's daughter Darcy Priola follows his progress. Priola eventually wrote a second letter about the case — this time to the parole board. The wording was carefully balanced and almost neutral, but the thrust was clear: Despite their misgivings, she and her sister, Daytona Ferry, were in favor of parole. "I don't know him, of course," she says now of Beckius, "but my gut feeling is that if he's going to be able to live in society around the rest of us, now is a good time for him to get out. He still has a chance to have his own family. I know it's weird to say, but I do feel like he's done well with what he's been given. He could have ended up getting in a lot of trouble in prison, but he learned to stay away from it. He figured it out. He could have kept going down that path very easily.
