October 21, 2025

The Reform Paradox: How Reduced Incarceration Has Coincided with Rising Crime

Introduction

Over the past two decades, Colorado has pursued a steady course of criminal justice reform aimed at reducing the footprint of the state’s correctional system. Lawmakers have prioritized leniency: lower sentences for drug offenses, expanded parole and probation opportunities, and restrictions on law enforcement discretion (see Appendix for a full list of criminal justice reform bills. 

These measures were intended to correct excesses of the past and emphasize rehabilitation over retribution. This is a noble goal, in keeping with Colorado’s dedication towards justice in all aspects.

Yet, in the wake of Colorado’s sharp rise in violent and property crime during the early 2020s, it is increasingly clear that reform has swung too far in one direction.

A functional criminal justice system must serve two ends: justice for offenders and justice for victims. Mercy and proportionality for offenders are both essential, but so too is the public’s safety of person and property. When policy places disproportionate weight on the treatment of offenders, the balance of justice falters, and the law-abiding public bears the cost not just to their own property and bodies but to their state’s economic wellbeing.

In the case of recidivism, the state has focused on lowering rates for over a decade as part of a wider effort to lower the incarcerated population. Colorado’s own data reveal a troubling pattern. Declining arrest and incarceration rates have coincided with an unmistakable rise in violent crime. The data suggests recidivism has fallen not because rehabilitation has triumphed, but because fewer offenders are being arrested or returned to custody in the first place.

The state’s challenge is no longer to reduce its correctional footprint—it is to restore accountability and deterrence without abandoning compassion. Colorado must find a middle ground between punitive excess and permissive neglect. Justice cannot be one-sided. The right of Coloradans to live safely and peaceably must once again take precedence in shaping the future of criminal justice policy. 

Whatever the policies, the measurement should be the public’s safety first and foremost; violent crime rates and property crime rates should anchor criminal justice policy discussions, whatever the respective goals on arrests, incarceration, or sentencing. 

Key Findings

• Colorado’s recidivism rate fell by 40% between 2008 and 2019, the third highest decline in the nation.
  • From 2008 to 2023, three-year, two-year, and one-year recidivism rates have declined by 41%, 42%, and 55%, respectively.
• Nearly one in three (31%) inmates released by the Colorado Department of Corrections return within three years.
  • This rate is a decrease from 2008 when more than half of released inmates (51.8%) returned within three years of being released.
• The total number of inmates in Colorado prisons and jails decreased 12% between the beginning of 2016 and the end of 2024.
  • From 2008 to 2023, arrest rates have dropped by 48%, outpacing declines in both three-year and two-year recidivism.
• Colorado’s arrest rate has nearly halved in the last 15 years. From 2008 to 2023, arrest rates plummeted from 452.36 per 100,000 citizens to 237.1, a drop of 47.6%.
• Both arrest rates and incarceration rates are strongly correlated with violent crime and property crime rates.
  • Violent crime and arrest rates are heavily correlated, with a coefficient of -0.83.
  • Violent crime rates and correctional population have an equally strong correlation coefficient of –0.82.
• Arrest count has declined by nearly 30% from 2014 to 2024 while the violent crime rate has increased by more than 55%.
• From December 2019 to December 2021, the Colorado incarcerated population fell by more than 20% while the violent crime rate rose by nearly 25%. Since then, its incarcerated population has remained below pre-pandemic levels.
• On average, there are 2,500 fewer inmates now than 2010s average levels.
• From 2017 to 2021, drug-related felonies accounted for no more than 6% of all felony incarcerations.

Colorado Reincarceration Rates

Over the last decade, Colorado has significantly changed its approach to defining recidivism, moving away from fragmented agency-specific definitions toward creating a single, statewide standard. This shift was formalized by legislation, SB 24-030, approved in 2024 that established a working group to develop a new, standardized definition for all state criminal and juvenile justice entities. 

The new definition of recidivism, which came into effect on July 1, 2025, is a ”new deferred agreement or an adjudication or conviction for a felony offense or misdemeanor offense.” This standard applies to all people in a probationary setting, whether or not they are incarcerated. 

This report examines the recidivism rates for individuals incarcerated in the Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC) prisons and Colorado’s jails. 

In the last 15 years, Colorado significantly reduced its reincarceration rates. 

This decline followed a series of reforms. In 2015, Colorado passed SB15-124, which reformed parole supervision by requiring officers to use intermediate sanctions, such as short jail stays of one to five days, before revoking parole for most technical violations such as missed appointments or failed drug tests. The idea was to create a “swift and certain” but proportional response, reserving full revocation for more serious behavior. Building on that, SB19-143 in 2019 further limited revocations for technical violations, mandating that non-criminal missteps be addressed with graduated sanctions and only allowing revocation in specific high-risk cases such as absconding, tampering with monitoring equipment, or contacting a victim. These reforms were designed to cut down on people cycling back into prison for non-criminal parole violations and to ease overcrowding. 

The law enforcement reforms of the early 2020s followed, most notably SB20-217. The Enhance Law Enforcement Integrity Act overhauled policing in the state by banning chokeholds, limiting deadly force, requiring body cameras, mandating data transparency and officer intervention, removing qualified immunity in state cases, and establishing strict accountability and decertification rules for misconduct.

In the United States, different states have different measurements for corrections recidivism, but CDOC considers the rate at which offenders are reincarcerated after one, two, and three years following their release. 

The National Council of State Governments performed a study of U.S. states’ three-year recidivism rates. Analysts used a range of base years from 2008 to 2012, depending on the state, and compared those to the recidivism rates from 2018 or 2019. Colorado’s recidivism decline was one of the most profound. In 2008, Colorado’s three-year recidivism rate was the nation’s fifth highest. By 2019, it dropped to the 24th-highest. The state’s three-year recidivism rate fell from 52% to 31%, a 40% decline. Only South Carolina and California had larger declines. 

In 2019, Colorado’s three-year recidivism rate stood at 51.8%, its two-year rate at 47.3%, and its one-year rate at 32.9%. In 2022, they have decreased to 30.6%, 27.5%, and 14.7%, respectively.

Figure 1

Figure 2

In 2008,  Colorado’s decrease in recidivism corresponds to a downtick in the state’s incarcerated population. On average, the total monthly population of Colorado jails and prisons is 12% lower now than the average in the previous decade. The state’s annual corrections population is shown in Figure 3.

Before the new decade, Colorado’s corrections population was stable. Between 2016 and 2020, the average total monthly population of Colorado’s prisons and jails was 19,918. 

The number of inmates in jails and prisons tumbled sharply at the beginning of 2020 and has not reached the levels of the latter half of the 2010s. Between January 2020 and December 2024, the average monthly inmate population was 16,850 – a 15% decrease.

The early years of the 2020s saw a precipitous drop in inmate population. Colorado inmate population reached its lowest level in June 2021 when there was an average of 15,434 inmates, more than 4,200 fewer than just 18 months prior. Since then, the inmate population has stabilized. Throughout calendar year 2024, there were an average of 17,435 inmates in Colorado. 

Figure 3

Both recidivism and incarceration levels have declined since 2016. Arrest rates have fallen along the same timeline, as shown in Figure 4.

Figure 4

Colorado’s arrest rate has nearly halved in the last 15 years. From 2008 to 2023, arrest rates have plummeted from 452.36 per 100,000 citizens to 237.1, a drop of 47.6%. 

This finding is further supported by correlation calculations. By any of the three measurements used by the Colorado Department of Corrections, there is a strong correlation between arrests and recidivism. 

Three-year recidivism and arrest rates have a correlation coefficient of .93, two-year with .94, and one-year with .96. These numbers represent incredibly strong correlations and further demonstrate that low recidivism is closely tied to low rates of arrest.

This tight relationship makes it difficult to interpret lower recidivism as evidence of improved rehabilitation programs. Instead, the data suggest that fewer people are entering the system at all from arrests, which naturally produces lower recidivism counts.

The Relationship Between Arrests, Inmates, and Crime 

Aggregate data on arrests, inmate populations, and recidivism suggest that the observed decline in recidivism rates stems primarily from a reduction in the number of individuals entering the correctional system. At the same time, complementary datasets reveal that this downward trend in arrests and incarceration is strongly correlated with rising crime rates, indicating a possible trade-off between system inflows and broader crime dynamics.

Figure 5

Arrest counts and violent crime have been shifting at inversely proportional rates, meaning that as arrests decrease, violent crime increases. 

As violent crime rates climbed to 473.9 per 100,000 citizens in 2024, arrest counts dipped to 13,526. These numbers contrast starkly from 2013 data points in which the violent crime rate was 305.36 and the arrest count was 18,868. These numbers demonstrates a net increase in violent crime of 55.2%. This increase is substantial – in fact, it more than doubles the percentage decrease of 28.31% seen in arrest rates. 

The correlation coefficient of -0.83 between violent crime and arrest rates indicates a strong inverse relationship, suggesting that reductions in arrest rates are strongly associated with increases in violent crime incidence.

Figure 6

Similar to the comparison between arrest counts and violent crime, inmate population and violent crime are also strongly negatively correlated. In the last decade, violent crime has been higher even though inmate population was lower. 

Figure 7

With a correlation coefficient of –0.82, the relationship between the violent crime rate and the correctional population is strongly negative. This finding indicates that as the number of incarcerated individuals declines, violent crime tends to rise — a pattern that is observable through CSI’s analysis of historical data.

Figure 8

From 2015 to 2024, there was a net rate of change of –11.13% in the inmate population. Over the same period, there was a net rate of change of +32.58% in violent crime. The rate of change seen in violent crime was nearly triple the rate of change seen in the inmate population.

Figure 9

An analysis of data from the FBI Crime Data Explorer, Colorado Department of Corrections, and Colorado Division of Justice also revealed significant relationships between recidivism, arrest, and crime rates. Notably, recidivism showed a strong positive correlation with arrest rates across all timeframes, with coefficients of 0.96 for one-year, 0.94 for two-year, and 0.93 for three-year recidivism rates. Generally, correlation coefficients that are closer to –1 and 1 represent variables that relate strongly to each other. With coefficients greater than .90, it is highly suggested that recidivism and arrest rates are closely linked. This finding could indicate that lower recidivism rates are not promoted by effective policy and corrections efforts, but instead lower rates of arrest.  

It is also noteworthy that arrest rates and violent crime rates possess a correlation of -.83. This coefficient may be negative, but it is also close to one, suggesting a strong inverse relationship. This data indicates that as recidivism rates decline, violent crime increases. Based on the relationship between recidivism and arrest rates, it can be extrapolated that the uptick in violent crime rates is tied to a decline in the arrest and incarceration of violent criminals.

Incarceration of Violent Offenders vs. Drug Offenders

Over the past fifteen years, Colorado has passed a series of laws that reduced penalties for drug offenses and reshaped the state’s sentencing framework. These include:

• HB10-1352 – Concerning Modifications to the Penalties for Offenses Involving Controlled Substances.

 This bill lowered penalties for possession, separated use from distribution crimes, and raised quantity thresholds for higher sentencing.

• HB11-1064 – Concerning a Presumption in Favor of Granting Parole to Certain Inmates Convicted of Drug Offenses.

 It created a pilot program for presumptive parole eligibility for nonviolent drug-use or possession offenders who met behavioral criteria.

• SB13-250 – Concerning Changes to the Sentencing of Persons Convicted of Drug Crimes.

 This legislation introduced a new sentencing grid that lowered felony classifications and reduced penalties for most drug crimes.

• HB17-1308 – Concerning the Elimination of Certain Mandatory Conditions of Parole.

 It removed automatic drug testing and other supervision conditions, reducing parole revocations for technical violations.

• HB19-1263 – Concerning Changing the Penalty for Certain Drug Possession Offenses.

 This measure reclassified many drug felonies as misdemeanors, reduced fines and jail terms, and emphasized treatment and community corrections over incarceration.

Together, these bills form the backbone of Colorado’s modern drug sentencing leniency framework.

By the end of the 2010s, drug offenders were a small fraction of the incarcerated population. Colorado’s correctional population is dominated by violent and property crime offenders rather than drug offenders, according to state data. 

Figure 10

Between 2017 and 2021, drug-related offenders have never exceeded 6% of prison populations compared to non-drug offenders.

Costs of Incarceration 

Costs of incarceration have been noted as a significant part of the rationale for decreasing recidivism and the prison population overall. However, if there is a causal relationship between violent crime and incarcerated population in Colorado, the costs of crime may outweigh the money saved on corrections. 

Reducing the prison population will generate savings. A CSI report from February 2025 found that in Fiscal Year 2022, it cost on average $56,766 annually to incarcerate one individual. In December 2015, the Department of Corrections’ total inmate population was 20,014. Using CSI’s estimated per inmate cost, it would require roughly $1,136,114,724 to retain these inmates for one year. 

By December 2021, the DOC inmate population had fallen to 15,642. Utilizing the same average cost, this level of incarceration cost roughly $887,933,772 per year. 

In December 2024, the DOC inmate population was 17,485, costing roughly $992,553,510 per year. These figures represent an approximate $143,561,214 decrease in cost from 2015 to 2024. 

The direct and indirect economic costs associated with crime negate these savings, however. 

As detailed in previous CSI reports, crime results in substantial economic costs to the state , in 2022 totaling more than $27 billion. The delta of cost of murders alone from 2015 to 2024 was approximately $800,000,000, more than four times the cost of incarcerations. This figure omits the cost of any other crime in this period and yet, quadruples how much Colorado spends on incarcerations.

Whatever the savings achieved with a lowered corrections population, the state’s economy loses in total if that thinning of incarcerated population is linked to an equivalent increase in violent and property crime.