In 2010, Colorado lawmakers took a meaningful step towards drug law reform by passing House Bill 1352, which nibbles at the edges of the disastrous War on Drugs by amending some of Colorado's controlled substance statutes (see my HuffPost piece on HB 1352).

And while lawmakers...

The Colorado legislature has taken a modest, but welcome step towards restraining its own penchant for overcriminalizing the economic and personal lives of Coloradans. Let's hope it makes us all a little bit freer from an often overweening state.

House Bill 11-1239 came out of recommendations by the

In Colorado, recidivism is defined as a return to prison "for either new criminal activity or a technical violation of parole, probation or non-departmental community placement within three years of release." Colorado's recidivism rate is fairly high compared to other states, at around 53 percent.

To...

In early February the Independence Institute, the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition and the Pew Center on the States hosted a panel event on the ongoing work of the Colorado Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice (CCJJ) and the prospects for criminal...

State spending does not drive the prison population. Rather, just like an entitlement, the prison population drives state spending. The legislature's ability to affect the prison caseload, and thus the corrections budget, rests in its prerogative to write, and when necessary, re-write the state's criminal sentencing and parole laws and...

The Colorado Medical Society (CMS) had its annual meeting in early September, and the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" (H.R. 3590, aka ObamaCare) was a focus of the gathering. The CMS apparently surveyed its membership, and according to an excellent Colorado Public Radio news piece, around half...

Jennifer Coken wants to be my state representative. She gathered 1,400 signatures to petition her way on to the Democratic primary ballot for House District 4 (which includes northwest Denver). She needed 849 signatures. The Secretary of State invalidated enough signatures to disqualify her from the ballot. This brings up...

Derec Shuler wants to be my state senator. He's running for the Senate District 34 seat in northwest Denver recently vacated by Paula Sandoval. He's a Republican in a heavily Democratic district. We live on the same street and both married well -- enough in common that I thought we...

It's tough being the establishment. Sometimes you have to trash your principles for political purposes. Privacy and choice, ideals once championed by liberals and their progressive allies, have been reduced to quaint notions applicable on politically acceptable occasions now that Democrats are the ruling class.

Take health care in Colorado....

On Tuesday, May 4, there will be a special election to fill the recently vacated Denver District 1 City Council seat. I met Larry Ambrose, one of ten candidates for the open seat, at a March candidate forum at the Oriental Theatre in northwest Denver. When asked what,...

On April 15, the Colorado House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed House Bill 1352, which nibbles at the edges of some of the more egregious aspects of the disastrous War on Drugs by reforming some of Colorado's controlled substance statutes.

This is a hugely important step for Colorado lawmakers in...

The libertarian public interest law firm Institute for Justice (IJ) has put out a tremendous new report on abusive civil asset forfeiture practices in the United States called "Policing for Profit." As the report notes, federal and state asset forfeiture laws often create perverse incentives for abuse by making civil...

Republicans often claim to be the party of fiscal conservatism and limited government. But Republican lawmakers in Colorado show little enthusiasm for applying those principles to Colorado's hugely expensive prison bureaucracy. So when sentencing reform bills pop up in the next legislative session, it will be an excellent opportunity for...

Colorado lawmakers' long-running devotion to the War on Drugs has helped push state prison spending to unsustainable levels. In the meantime, illicit drugs remain readily available throughout the state. This year, the Colorado Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice (CCJJ) has broken down into several sub-groups including a Drug Policy...