Email Author Alan Prendergast

Awards

• 2011 - Gerald Loeb Award for Distinguished Business and Financial Journalism, published February 11, 2010

  "You're in Bad Hands"

• 2011 - Best of the West/First Amendment Funding, Inc., published September 30, 2010

  "Black Out"

• 2011 - Best of the West/First Amendment Funding, Inc., published November 4, 2010

  "Like an Open Book"

• 2011 - AAN AltWeekly Awards, published February 11, 2010

  "You're in Bad Hands"

• 2011 - Society of Professional Journalists/Colorado Chapter, published February 11, 2010

  "You're in Bad Hands"

• 2010 - National Council on Crime and Delinquency/Prevention for a Safer Society Award, published October 22, 2009

  "The Quality of Mercy"

• 2010 - AAN AltWeekly Awards, published May 14, 2009

  "The Giveaway"

• 2010 - Maggies: The Magazine Awards of Western Publishing, published February 11, 2010

  "You're in Bad Hands"

• 2009 - Society of Professional Journalists/Colorado Chapter, published April 10, 2008

  "Miles and Miles"

• 2008 - Sigma Delta Chi Awards/Society of Professional Journalists, published August 16, 2007

  "The Caged Life"

• 2008 - AAN AltWeekly Awards, published February 8, 2007

  "The Punisher"

• 2006 - National Council on Crime and Delinquency/Prevention for a Safer Society Award, published December 8, 2005

  "Catch-16"

• 2006 - AAN AltWeekly Awards, published May 12, 2005

  "If the Shoe Fits"

• 2006 - AAN AltWeekly Awards, published June 23, 2005

  "Welcome to America"

• 2006 - AAN AltWeekly Awards, published September 8, 2005

  "Duke of Oil"

More

2012 Stories by Alan Prendergast

• 

  FEATURED STORY

  Tonight: Poetry Out Loud gets proud in Lakewood

  published Mar 20, 2012

  On a Tuesday night on the cusp of spring, when a young man's fancy turns and the cruelest month looms just days away, you could do worse than head to Lakewood to hear great verse declaimed at the seve... More >>

• 

  COVER STORY

  The Columbine shootings continue to "inspire" Hollywood

  published March 22, 2012

  The news first surfaced in the Hollywood trade press last month: The Lifetime cable network is developing a miniseries about the 1999 school... More >>

• Child and Family Investigators clause in reform bill draws fire from legal lobby

  published Mar 16, 2012

  Figuring some modest improvement is better than none, the Colorado House Judiciary Committee passed along a bill yesterday that's intended to make child and family investigators (CFI) and other profes... More >>

• Aaron Million pipeline: Opponents' build PR blitz around film Green With Envy

  published Mar 15, 2012

  Real-estate investor Aaron Million's modest proposal to build a 550-mile pipeline to move water from southwest Wyoming to Colorado's Front Range has lots of critics. But a major challenge facing oppon... More >>

• Joe Arridy: Pardoned long after his execution, mentally impaired man gets online props

  published Mar 13, 2012

  The most shameful date in the history of Colorado's death penalty is January 6, 1939 -- the day the state executed a bewildered 23-year-old man with an IQ of 46, a man who was innocent in just about e... More >>

• Juveniles prosecuted as adults: Colorado's hardline approach not working, report says

  published Mar 06, 2012

  Nearly twenty years after Denver's much-hyped "Summer of Violence" triggered a harsher approach to juvenile offenders statewide, lawmakers are wrestling with two reform bills -- and a new report conte... More >>

• ACLU, faith groups urge governors not to sell out to private prison giant

  published Mar 05, 2012

  A broad proposal by the country's largest private prison company to buy up and privatize state prisons has been met with a stiff rebuke from the American Civil Liberties Union and a coalition of justi... More >>

• Callie Hendrickson: "Pro-slaughter" appointee to wild horse board draws protests

  published Mar 02, 2012

  The appointment of Callie Hendrickson to a board that helps shape the federal government's wild horse management plan has touched off a frenzy of petitions and protests by horse advocacy groups. They ... More >>

• 

  FEATURED STORY

  School shootings: Some Columbine myths resurface

  published Feb 29, 2012

  There's no coherent explanation yet for seventeen-year-old T.J. Lane's attack on Chardon High School in Ohio on Monday, which killed three students and injured two others -- and the "why" may prove el... More >>

• Carbondale treehouse featured in Tiny Homes, Simple Shelter book

  published Feb 27, 2012

  Call it a high honor. In recent months, a painstakingly crafted kids' treehouse along the Roaring Fork River has become a local landmark of sorts for commuters making the Glenwood Springs-to-Aspen s... More >>

• Prisoners don't have a right to be read their rights, Supreme Court decides

  published Feb 24, 2012

  Somewhere Byron "Whizzer" White is smiling. The late, great University of Colorado football star and U.S. Supreme Court Justice never cared much for his colleagues' bleeding-heart Miranda decision bac... More >>

• Tara Perry and the Clemency Six: Where are they nowr

  published Feb 23, 2012

  It was almost three years ago that I first got interested in the case of Tara Perry, subject of this week's feature, "The Girl Who Fell to Earth." Perry was among several inmates considered strong ca... More >>

• 

  FEATURED STORY

  Video: Tara Perry on boyfriend Randy Miller's rampage and suicide

  published Feb 22, 2012

  Tara Perry, the subject of this week's cover story, "The Girl Who Fell to Earth," has made a remarkable turnaround since she was first incarcerated thirteen years ago, at the age of sixteen. Correctio... More >>

• 

  COVER STORY

  Sixteen-year-old Tara Perry followed her man into crime and madness

  published February 23, 2012

  They know how to make an entrance, these bad boys. They strut into the King Soopers on Smoky Hill Road on a Friday evening in May like it's... More >>

• Water wars: Rally asks John Hickenlooper to fix "river-killing" diversion project

  published Feb 21, 2012

  Despite concerns raised by the EPA and alarms sounded in a state report, Colorado officials are moving forward with a plan to divert more water from the Upper Colorado River to the Front Range -- whic... More >>

• Ken Salazar's "squeeze" budget still subsidizes grazing on public lands

  published Feb 20, 2012

  In these lean times, last week Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar proposed slashing costs and hiking a range of user fees -- everything from the cost of a federal stamp for duck hunting to oil and ... More >>

• Inmate rape resolution to be shared over objections of private prison giant

  published Feb 17, 2012

  A former prisoner, now a shareholder in the country's largest for-profit prison operator, has won a battle with company management over his campaign to hold the Corrections Corporation of America acco... More >>

• Louie Lucero, accused of torturing women, insists relationships were consensual

  published Feb 16, 2012

  This arrives a little late for Valentine's Day, but Louie Lucero has an unusual approach to romance that's bound to send any female into orbit -- and probably to the hospital. The southwest Colorado... More >>

• 

  FEATURED STORY

  John Severin, comics giant, enters another dimension

  published Feb 15, 2012

  Legendary illustrator John Powers Severin, whose 60-year career in the comics world stretched from the dawning of MAD magazine to the Silver Age at Marvel to a gay revival of the Rawhide Kid and beyon... More >>

• Thomas Wierdsma, private prison exec, accused of seeking to deport daughter-in-law

  published Feb 13, 2012

  A high-ranking official at one of the nation's largest private prison operators has been accused by his daughter-in-law of intimidation and harassment in a Boulder domestic dispute -- including threat... More >>

• Big Oil making big profits on declining production

  published Feb 08, 2012

  It's official: 2011 was a record-busting year in the oil industry, with the five largest companies -- BP, ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Royal Dutch Shell -- reporting all-time-high profits ... More >>

• Brain injuries contribute to criminal behavior, or are they a side effectr

  published Feb 07, 2012

  For decades researchers have attempted to fathom how the "criminal mind" differs from that of the average citizen. Now it appears there's often one critical physiological difference -- a significant p... More >>

• Police misconduct records and more to be off-limits under two new bills

  published Feb 06, 2012

  Despite the obligatory squawks from lawmakers about the need for transparency in government, few of their actions are quite as transparent as their efforts to shield internal bureaucratic processes fr... More >>

• Make My Day Better bill: Okay to use deadly force at workr

  published Feb 03, 2012

  A running gag in the classic comedy Raising Arizona is that just about everybody in the vicinity of Tempe is packing heat -- even the pimple-faced kid at the convenience store, who whips out a Dirty H... More >>

• Doug Lamborn's oil-shale move: Is he a cheap date for the energy industryr

  published Feb 02, 2012

  I know, I know. There are lots of other folks out there struggling to make ends meet, unsung worker drones subsisting on sweatshop wages. But let's face it: Doug Lamborn is underpaid. I'm not talkin... More >>