Report on crime in Colorado raises flags among criminal justice reform advocates

A new report on crime in Colorado for the first half of 2022 shows some disturbing trends. A closer look at the data and the organization that published it has raised flags among criminal justice reform organizations.

The conservative-leaning Common Sense Institute released a new study that details certain crimes for the first six months of 2022.

Along with the growing concern of fentanyl overdoses, deaths and sales, there are seven other categories the group focused on, including robbery, arson and vehicle theft along with buying stolen property, vandalism, prostitution and drug possession and sales.

The Common Sense Institute says crime increased in those "seven major categories." But it says most of those increases from the first six months of 2021 to the same period in 2022 were under a 3% increase; buying stolen property went up by 2.7%, vandalism by 2.2%, prostitution/pandering and drug possession/sales by 1.9%, and robbery by 0.2%. Only arson and motor vehicle thefts saw upticks larger than that, at 5% and 13.6%, respectively.

By contrast, murder, rape, other sexual assault, and assault all went down. According to the report:

Murder fell 10.7% 

Rape fell 13.5% 

Sexual assault fell 14.6% 

Assaults fell 3.1%

Burglary fell 10.6% 

Fraud fell more than 43%

Compared to pre-pandemic levels, those rates are considerably higher in many categories, but these trends of violent crime are comparable to the national average from 2020 through 2022, while property crime rates are slightly higher.

The numbers used in the Common Sense Institute's report come from publicly available data on the Colorado Bureau of Investigation's website, the organization said.

But just saying "crime data," can be vague. It can – and in this case; does – lump violent and nonviolent crimes. It also relies on arrest data, which excludes statistics like unreported crimes, crimes that police didn't respond to or make an arrest in, charges that are dropped and convictions that are reversed.

"We present an overall crime rate which is based on crime categories. We then disaggregate the overall crime rate into 14 major categories of crime," Steven Byers, economist and one of the report's authors, said through a spokeswoman. "We do not have data on unreported crimes. We focused on crime rate per 100,000 residents. This is the most reliable way to compare multiple jurisdictions, whether they be counties, cities, or states."

Statewide averages can also be heavily skewed by outlier cities, which aren't representative of crime rates in any one municipality of the state or the state as a whole.

According to FBI crime data, Colorado's violent crime rate is 4.2 per 1,000 people, whereas the national average is 4.0. The property crime rate in Colorado is 28.3, while the national average is 19.6.

The report also says "crime in Colorado has increased substantially since 2008," but a closer look at the data shows ebbs and flows in those numbers.

It goes on to say "concurrent with Colorado's rising crime rates, since the start of the pandemic, incarceration in Department of Corrections facilities dropped," heavily implying the release of people from jails and prisons directly led to the increase in crime.

But even the data provided by the Common Sense Institute from the Colorado Department of Corrections doesn't necessarily support that claim; instances of people returning to jail for committing new crimes and technical violations dropped in 2020, the last year the data was available. The same trend was seen among juvenile offenders. A spokeswoman for the organization says this is because some people were released and fewer were entering jail.

Leanne Wheeler is the board chair of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, an organization that says its mission is "to eliminate the overuse of the criminal justice system and advance community health and safety."

After having read the report, Wheeler told CBS News Colorado, "The main takeaway is that we are squarely in election season and the authors continue to politicize public safety."

"CSI endeavors to drive the 'tough on crime' conversation," Wheeler said. "This narrative is used in a partisan way, and it is used to increase budgets for mass incarceration. The United States incarcerates more of its population per capita than any other nation on the globe."

Mitch Morrissey, the former district attorney in Denver and one of the authors of the Common Sense Institute's report, disputed the claims of the report's detractors, "I know this is an election year, but we've been doing these reports before it was an election year."

"Everyone that lives in this state knows the crime rate is up. Why? Those people can debate those. But when we talk about things like, 'the prison population is down,' 'the crime rate is up,' those aren't things that you can argue about it," he continued. "This report gets labeled as partisan and it's like, okay, what side are we on here?"

He said the institute isn't trying to get anyone elected or defeated, and that they're simply trying to share facts and figures.

He urges policymakers and voters to look at the history of how changes in laws and policies have contributed to crime rates.

"How are you politicizing something when you're stating facts?" he asked. "I disagree totally with that."

Maureen Cain is a policy liaison at the office of the State Public Defender and a member of the sentencing reform task force at the Colorado Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice. She also took several issues with CSI's report.

"When all you have is a hammer, all you see is a nail," she said of two of the three co-authors. While representing each major political party, two of the authors are career prosecutors.

"When you look at all 50 states … and when you look at what prevents crime, it's not punishment, it's social stability," Cain said. "Colorado ranks among the lowest in the country for mental health care and access to care."

She says instead of increasing punishments and locking up more people, the government and society, more broadly, should address their needs in ways that prevent or minimize substance abuse, mental health issues, economic instability and other societal issues that contribute to crime.