Subject: Parole

• Chief Michaud Given Parole

  March 20, 2007

• Busted in Sin City

  March 15, 2007

• A Little Confidence

  March 13, 2007

• Coming Home

  February 2, 2007

• Casey's Making Moves

  May 24, 2007

• Throwing the Book at Parole

  November 8, 2007

• Pandering Over Parole at the Statehouse

  March 20, 2008

• Shmuck of the Week

  April 4, 2008

• From Supermax to a Family of Four

  May 1, 2008

• Oklahoma Gothic

  December 11, 1997

• Dismal House

  Ex-con Bob Sylvester wanted to help parolees go straight. But angry former supporters say that what happened at his shelter was pretty twisted.

  September 3, 1998

• Buddha Behind Bars

  For these federal prisoners, their last chants finally gave them inner peace.

  October 8, 1998

• Follow That Story

  Halfway to Nowhere.

  November 4, 1999

• Breaking News: Joe Principe's standoff with the cops ends badly

  Three views of Joe Principe. The call came into my voicemail Monday morning, November 17. "I'm calling to give you the exclusive rights to a standoff with the government," the voice said. "I'm not going to leave my house. They're jamming me up again… after all this nonsense that I've been through already, I'm just going to say no. I've got everything rigged. Even if they try to get in, it will take hours. This might get good. Call me." The caller left no name, but I knew who it was. I

  November 19, 2008

• Josh Penry's fears about a plethora of parolees a big mythtake

  Josh Penry (pictured here) wasn't a happy man at the legislative hearing on parole policy December 8, and that's probably a good thing. Penry, the Fruita Republican state senator who takes a back seat to no one in his tough-on-crime posturing, has been hollering about the supposedly alarming increase in early release, better known as discretionary parole, among state inmates under Governor Bill Ritter's watch -- the subject of my earlier blog, "Pandering Over Parole at the Statehouse." But a re

  December 9, 2008

• Off Limits

  February 3, 2000

• Letters to the Editor

  June 5, 2003

• Follow That Story

  March 11, 2004

• Follow That Story

  February 10, 2005

• Can a troubled Colorado prison change the way inmates think?

  November 6, 2008

• Cruel and Unusual

  Declaring prison a waste of his time and your money, a minor felon seeks his own execution.

  May 23, 2002

• Paradox Lounge

  Put some teeth into it!

  July 17, 2008

• Pro and Con

  Amadeus Harlan has spent his life playing everyone around him — but not as a Denver Bronco.

  January 31, 2008

• Head Games

  At least one out of every five Colorado prisoners is mentally ill -- some violent, some undetected or untreated. How did the Big House become the Bug House?

  September 21, 2006

• Over and Over Again

  Spending half a billion dollars on new prisons won't solve the state's biggest crime problem: the staggering failure rate of parole.

  April 6, 2006

• The Revolving Door

  Some parolees face a run-on sentence.

  May 22, 2003

• The Long Road Home

  Why so many parolees go back to prison, and how a new approach could help turn them around.

  May 22, 2003

• Bull's Eyeful

  The sordid legal saga of Katica Crippen, Second Amendment pinup girl.

  February 13, 2003

• Shelter From the Storm

  In trying to keep the streets safe, Denver almost made a clean sweep of its homeless providers.

  June 28, 2001

• A Mile High

  Trick or treatment?

  March 1, 2001

• A Man of Convictions

  Bob Sylvester threatened to send these men back to prison. Now they're sending him back.

  October 19, 2000

• Hard Time

  The oldest lifer in Colorado prisons is dying to be anywhere but here.

  October 5, 2000

• Captive Market

  Jobs. Gadgets. Profits. Crime pays big-time for the prison-industrial complex.

  August 26, 1999

• The Hayward Bus

  One woman's long, long journey to fix the parole system and free her husband.

  November 19, 1998

• Soul of the Matter

  October 15, 1998

• Safely Behind Bars

  Prison life didn't suit prominent inmate activist Fidel Ramos, but parole was even worse.

  July 3, 1997

• Teen Anger

  After young Joe Gallegos was let back into society, all hell broke loose.

  April 17, 1997

• Inside Information

  Prison reformers decry the state parole board's approach toward potential parolees.

  April 3, 1997

• Please Release Me

  Colorado faces a boom in parolees--and rising evidence that parole isn't working.

  January 9, 1997

• This Jail for Hire

  Colorado's cheap solution to prison overcrowding has cost inmates plenty. It could cost the state millions.

  August 8, 1996

• Stealing Time

  As its inmate population ages, the Colorado prison system discovers there's no con like an old con.

  August 1, 1996

• The Committed

  The state pours millions of dollars--and controversial social theory--into a prison for mentally ill felons.

  July 25, 1996

• Jack's Back

  The state had an opportunity to lock up rapist and career criminal Jack Ainsworth for good. Now it's too late.

  July 11, 1996

• AN INCOMPLETE SENTENCE

  FOR A DOZEN YEARS, FUGITIVE PEDOPHILE JAMES CHRISTENSEN CLAIMS HE LIVED CRIME-FREE. THAT'S NOT ENOUGH FOR THE STATE PAROLE BOARD.THE SINS OF THE FATHER WHEN PEDOPHILE JAMES CHRISTENSEN WAS SENTENCED UNDER THE DAY-TO-LIFE STATUTE, THE STATE DIDN'T FIGURE O

  June 21, 1995

• HOMEWARD BOUND

  CRIME MAY NOT PAY, BUT ELECTRONIC HOME DETENTION SURE DOES.

  April 26, 1995

• ON THE OFFENSIVE

  November 23, 1994

• STRAIGHT TIME

  September 7, 1994

• Life on the street for homeless parolees: "It sucks"

  ​Three years ago, in a feature titled "Over and Over Again," I looked at one of the primary reasons for the staggering failure rate of parolees in Colorado. That would be the fact that more and more prisoners are paroling homeless, with no job prospects and little preparation for what they're going to face living in a shelter or on the street. Before long the majority of them end up back in prison -- not for new crimes, usually, but for technical violations of their parole conditions, like

  August 5, 2009

• From Cañon City to Maui: Ex-con Weldon Long's strange trip

  ​It sounds like a tidy piece of inspirational fiction: A coke-snorting, booze-guzzling dropout squanders every opportunity in life, turns to armed robbery, burglary and sleazy telemarketing scams, spends much of his adult life behind bars as a self-proclaimed "worthless piece of shit" -- then discovers the secrets of better living from self-help gurus, totally reforms, emerges from prison in time to salvage a relationship with his young son, and builds a multimillion-dollar company from sc

  September 10, 2009

• Scott "Fear Factor" McInnis is very, very concerned about your safety

  ​Governor Bill Ritter's modest proposal to parole hundreds of inmates a few weeks or months before their mandatory release date, thereby cutting millions from the state budget, has become the political whipping boy for his most opportunistic critics, from GOP legislators to Weld County District Attorney (and Senate candidate) Ken Buck to the hand-wringing editorial board over at the Denver Post. But nobody has stomped on the issue with more enthusiasm than gubernatorial opponent Scott Mc

  October 19, 2009