Defense Attorney Urges State To ‘Think Outside the Cage’

Joins No More Prisons Coalition in opposing unbudgeted millions for prisons

DENVER – Sept. 22, 2025 — The No More Prisons Coalition lit a fire under the state Joint Budget Committee Sept. 22, but it wasn’t enough to prevent approval of more money for prison cells. The committee voted 4-2 to approve $2.8 million in unbudgeted spending.

“The wheels of injustice grind slowly,” said Casey Krizman, criminal defense attorney and founder of Krizman Law. “I’m encouraged by the amount of community opposition organized by the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition. The JBC lawmakers saw that there is growing support for alternatives to caging people. They apparently weren’t ready to think outside the cage.”

Dozens of members of the No More Prisons Coalition packed the JBC hearing room. No one from the Department of Corrections was at the meeting to answer lawmakers’ questions about missed opportunities to reduce the number of unnecessarily imprisoned people.

Under legislation passed in 2018, the governor and his prison managers are supposed to release inmates who are within three months of their parole date and to consider halfway house placement for low-risk inmates when the prisons are close to capacity. Now that the prisons are near capacity, the governor has been slow to enact those measures.

State Rep. Emily Sirota said in her conversations with prison guards, she learned there are ill and elderly people in prison who are “no risk” to society who do not need to be in a jail cell.

Sen. Judy Amabile, who joined Sirota in opposing the unbudgeted request, said she wants to see the prison system make progress in addressing its systemic bottlenecks. Sen. Julie Gonzales, chairwoman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said her committee and the Judiciary Committee in the House opposed the spending request because they are so concerned about the prison system’s slow pace of reform.

The Legislature met in special session in August to make cuts and increase taxes to meet a $700 million shortfall caused by Congress’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The $3 million of unbudgeted spending approved for the prison system will mean cuts elsewhere, but that won’t be addressed until the full Legislature reconvenes in January.