First and foremost, I would like to thank everyone who has been reading my blog, and I would especially like to thank the people who have been kind enough to write in and ask me a few questions. This week, I received a letter from a woman that stated, “When you enter the Legal System, the Government is supposed to provide health care, food, and housing to you. I am not saying that they do the best at that.” She then asked, “So, I’m curious. What would you change first in your facility if you had the ability to do that?” Thank you for your question, Jessica!

I don’t believe that changing something in my facility would be the right place to start. I feel that in order for me to change what I want to change in my facility, which is the way inmates are classified and housed, it would have to be implemented all across CDOC. Right now, CDOC has a system that classifies inmates, and this system takes into account the severity of their crime, previous criminal history, escape history, institutional violence, and a multitude of other factors. After the classification process is complete, the inmate is given a numerical classification score. Zero to two points represent minimum security, three to eleven points indicate minimum restricted, twelve to fourteen points denote medium custody, and fifteen points and up signify close custody. Here lies the problem, CDOC then houses every type of offender together in one melting pot. They house people convicted of murder that have life sentences with first-time non-violent drug offenders, and they house violent sex offenders with young men convicted of non-violent property crimes. Some of these non-violent offenders only have a couple of years to do. CDOC literally intermingles every single type of offender together with little or no regard to the way this will affect recidivism. You see, people that are never getting out and that will die behind these walls think completely differently than a young man or woman that is doing a short sentence. The convict code and way of thinking were not invented by a person going home in a few years. It was invented by the people that were never going home. The convict code and the prison politics that evolved from it are a virus that spreads from one person to another. What did humanity do when COVID-19 hit? We quarantined and administered vaccines to stop the virus from spreading. I propose doing the same thing with the contagious way criminals and inmates think. You see, if you house everyone together, everyone is going to pretty much think the same way, and the people that don’t think the way the majority thinks will then become the opposition. What do you think happens to a non-violent opposition from an aggressive, violent majority in prison? They become chum for the sharks. Nobody wants to become so, what they do is assimilate, and once they assimilate for protection, they are treated just like everybody else in prison. Colorado has approximately 18 men’s facilities ranging from minimum security to maximum security. My solution would be to take the already implemented classification process and tweak it a little to take the way inmates think into account. I would then utilize this classification system to reassign inmates to a new housing environment. I would house lifers with lifers, violent offenders with like-minded violent offenders, and drug and non-violent offenders with one another. I would also take institutional violence and gang activity into account. If non-violent offenders showed a pattern of violence to each other by assaulting their fellow inmates, I would then even with like-minded violent offenders. I wouldn’t do this over simple fights, as fights happen everywhere in life, including on the playground. I would only do this if the inmate gave the classification committee no choice. As far as gang members and gang activity go, I would actually have a separate classification process for them and their behavior. That is an entirely different blog, though.

My opposition is going to ask and say, “Do you know how much these changes would cost to implement? It’s not feasible or practical, we can’t do it.” My response is, “Yes, I do know how much it would cost, and it would be expensive. But your last budget for corrections was $1 billion. You have the money, and if you want a safer system with a drastic lower rate of recidivism, you will open up your wallet and implement these changes.”

I hope that answers your question, Jessica. If anybody else out there has a question, please don’t hesitate to write to me.

If you wish to correspond:

Steve Ogden Jr. DC# 109636 Po Box 600 Canyon City, Colorado 81215

You can also reach me through www.Jpay.com