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Disability Law Colorado has spent years urging the United States Department of Justice to look into the state’s corrections system. That wish was finally granted on December 8, when the DOJ announced an investigation into 33 facilities operated by the Colorado Department of Corrections and Department of Youth Services.
But the investigation isn’t happening because of DLC’s multiple complaints of “systematic failures” within the CDOC. Instead, it appears to be a politically motivated move, adding to President Donald Trump’s continued efforts to release former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters from state prison.
Peters is serving a nine-year sentence for an election-tampering scheme attempting to prove discredited claims that Trump, rather than Joe Biden, won the 2020 election. Trump offered an illegitimate pardon for Peters last week, though he has no power to free her, as Peters was convicted on state charges, not federal. The DOJ official who announced the probe into Colorado’s prisons, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, has reshared several X posts celebrating the investigation as “how we FREE TINA PETERS.”
Despite the feds’ dubious intentions, local disability advocates call the federal intervention “an important step toward accountability.”
“For years, we have documented systemic failures within the Department of Corrections that harm individuals with disabilities,” says Meghan Baker, senior attorney for DLC.
In a December 11 statement, the organization called on the DOJ to focus its investigation on the CDOC’s “pattern and practice of violating the rights of people with disabilities.” DLC noted that it “opposes the [Trump] administration’s cuts to Medicaid and attacks on civil rights,” however, “the agency flagged the treatment of inmates as an appropriate priority.”
DLC filed formal complaints against the CDOC with the DOJ in 2022 and 2023. The 2023 complaint was on behalf of an individual inmate, and the 2022 complaint was a result of a year of examining issues, interviewing over a dozen inmates and reviewing records for additional inmates.
The 2022 complaint accused the CDOC of failing to provide reasonable accommodations to people with disabilities on numerous occasions.
Specific allegations included that the CDOC kept some inmates tied to their beds in four-point restraints for days or weeks straight. The CDOC is also accused of keeping inmates confined in their cells alone for twenty to 24 hours per day, not even being let out for showers, and not providing adequate visits from medical professionals or access to medical equipment. ;
“These practices do not rehabilitate; they often worsen existing disabilities and create more barriers to successful reentry into the community,” Baker says. “Colorado’s prison system has routinely failed to appropriately assess and screen people upon intake — especially those with disabilities. That has led to improper classification, unsafe housing and denial of necessary accommodations.”
In response to the complaints at the time, the DOJ followed up with questions but did not announce an investigation, according to DLC spokesperson Felix Ortiz.
CDOC spokesperson Alondra Gonzalez did not respond to an inquiry about DLC’s allegations, instead providing the following statement regarding the DOJ probe:
“The Colorado Department of Corrections is aware of the investigation announced by the U.S. Department of Justice,” Gonzalez says. “We have received the initial notification and are currently reviewing it.”
The federal investigation will evaluate whether the CDOC violates the constitutional rights of inmates by “failing to provide adequate medical care and safe and sanitary physical conditions of confinement,” according to the DOJ letter sent to Governor Jared Polis on December 8.
The investigation will also look into whether detainees in youth facilities are subject to excessive force and inadequate nutrition, and whether the CDOC houses “biological males in units designated for females,” the letter reads.
The announcement of the probe came on the same week that the DOJ sued Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold over her refusal to give the federal government access to the state’s unredacted voter registration information.
