President Barack Obama recently commuted the sentences of eight federal prisoners serving absurdly long sentences for crack cocaine convictions, noting that such harsh punishments couldn’t be imposed under current sentencing schemes. But Colorado’s recent governors have been reluctant to exercise their own clemency powers, even when doing so could save…
In the summer of 2012 a federal judge declared that the conditions of solitary confinement at the Colorado State Penitentiary constitute “a paradigm of inhumane treatment” — and ordered that a mentally ill inmate who’d been housed there for years was entitled to at least three hours a week of…
The management of Denver’s park system under Mayor Michael Hancock’s administration has generated controversies on several fronts, as detailed in our current feature, “Parks and Wreck.” But perhaps the most serious dispute between the mayor and park lovers has to do with his decision to swap eleven acres of cherished…
It may seem downright unChristmasy to be talking about the dead, grateful or not, at this time and season. But if you’ve got an eccentric, contemplative, bookish, introspective type on your shopping list, then I have a suggestion: Dayton Foster’s The Dead Do Speak To Us…of Love, Life & Death…
This week’s cover story, “Parks and Wreck,” looks into a series of evolving controversies over the way Mayor Michael Hancock’s administration is managing Denver’s park system, from battles over ballfield revenue and use to a lawsuit triggered by trading city-owned open space in the Cherry Creek corridor for an office…
It could have been a simple matter, this business of replacing a popular but time-battered playground on the west side of Denver’s City Park. But the itch to do more, to radically transform what a playground might be and what it could mean, seems to have been racing through the…
It’s one of those phrases that gets tossed around after a school shooting, like how the shooter “seemed like a nice, quiet boy” and “didn’t fit the profile” — never mind that there is no profile for school shooters, other than seeming to be nice, quiet boys. From the moment…
In what’s being praised as a significant step toward reform, the Colorado Department of Corrections is now instructing staff to no longer consign mentally ill prisoners to administrative segregation. In a memo to prison wardens issued earlier this week, a DOC official explains that the “major mentally ill” must be…
Hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking,” is all about opposing forces operating under extreme pressure. Energy companies pump a mixture of water, sand and chemicals into tight shale formations in an effort to extract oil and gas. Cities respond by passing fracking bans designed to extract the energy companies. The fracking industry…
Five years ago, a jaw-dropping scandal rocked Pennsylvania’s juvenile justice system: A popular judge, known for the tough sentences he handed out to juveniles, had schemed with another judge to take millions in kickbacks from the builder and operator of two private youth detention facilities. Yet behind that brazen bit…
Every bureaucracy needs its whistleblowers and gadflies, its disgruntled ex-gofers and disillusioned ex-go-getters, eager to expose government waste and folly. Without them, the smell would become unbearable, like a public toilet that hasn’t been disinfected in months. And that makes the disappearance of The Real Colorado Department of Corrections, an…
If the allegations concerning Frank Ruybalid, district attorney of Huerfano and Las Animas counties, hold water — and the Colorado Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel has a large tub of claims that Ruybalid mishandled at least sixteen criminal cases, failing to obey court orders or disclose evidence and then dismissing…
Back in the drill-baby-drill heyday of the George W. Bush administration, the Department of the Interior was plagued by nasty oil royalty scandals and cockeyed public lands policies that brazenly favored energy interests over environmental concerns. But now that the Bushies are long gone, is the situation at Obama’s Interior…
A long-festering conflict between southeast Colorado ranchers and the Pentagon slipped into a wary truce Monday, when a senior Army official announced a strategic retreat from plans to expand the 367-square-mile Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site. The move, coming after months of unofficial hints and assurances, illustrates the shifting priorities of…
The citizens of Deer Trail have yet to vote on a proposed ordinance to allow the hunting of drones within the town limits. The date of the vote has been postponed until December 10 because of legal challenges to the petitions and may be postponed again. But that hasn’t stopped…
This week’s cover story, “The Secret Garden,” examines the efforts of gardening and local-foods activists to develop a healthy living park on the site of a former elementary school in Alamosa — a campaign thwarted a few months ago when the school board decided to sell the land to an…
Right up until everything fell apart last May, Luette Frost thought the deal was actually going to happen. The seed that she and a few others had planted, then nurtured for five years, was ready to bear fruit. Frost had moved to Alamosa in 2002 as the coordinator of a…
Flanked by environmental leaders and energy industry executives, Governor John Hickenlooper has unveiled tough new regulations for reducing methane emissions and other pollution from oil and gas drilling across the state. Leaning hard on words like “partnership” and “shared interest,” the governor stressed that the new rules would insure that…
With a flood of Kennedy material coming out to mark the fiftieth anniversary of that surreal day in Dallas, brace yourself for plenty of resurgent conspiracy theories concerning who and what was behind JFK’s assassination. Despite its come-on title, JFK: A President Betrayed, a new documentary playing on DirecTV and…
After the murder of Colorado Department of Corrections chief Tom Clements last spring by parole absconder Evan Ebel , it was obvious that the state’s creaky, overburdened parole system was overdue for some serious scrutiny. Now, Governor John Hickenlooper has proposed a 25 percent boost in the parole budget for…
Despite being outspent by oil and gas interests by more than 30-1 — and facing the threat of more litigation by Colorado’s gas-friendly governor — fracktivists are celebrating the passage of ballot measures prohibiting new drilling in Boulder, Lafayette and Fort Collins. The moratorium vote on oil and gas production…
We’re in the last lap of voting season, which means the fliers, robocalls and door-to-door canvassers are piling up faster than heaps of dead leaves. But some of the biggest spenders in this off-year election aren’t your usual crowd of school board hopefuls, tax hikers and pot crusaders: They’re the…
