Colorado Legislators Reverse Course, Approve Funding for Additional Prison Beds

A week after initially rejecting the Colorado Department of Corrections’ funding request for additional prison beds, including at the Buena Vista Correctional Complex, Colorado’s Joint Budget Committee approved $2.4 million in funding. | Photo Credit: Colorado Department of Corrections

What You Need to Know

• Colorado’s Joint Budget Committee voted 5-1 to approve $2.4 million for 788 additional prison beds after rejecting the request a week earlier.
• Democratic lawmakers who previously opposed the request said safety risks in state facilities and county jails, along with fiscal pressures, drove their change in position.
• Legislators reiterated demands for a broader plan from Gov. Jared Polis’s administration and the Department of Corrections to address staffing shortages and parole-related backlogs tied to overcrowding.

Learn More

DENVER, Colo. – Colorado lawmakers approved $2.4 million in midyear funding for hundreds of additional state prison beds after initially blocking the request and demanding a plan to address overcrowding.

The legislature’s Joint Budget Committee voted 5-1 on Jan. 28 to fund 788 additional beds requested by the Colorado Department of Corrections, citing ongoing pressure on state facilities and county jails. The funding will be used primarily at the Sterling Correctional Facility, Delta Correctional Center and Buena Vista Correctional Complex, according to reporting by Colorado Politics.

The decision marked a reversal from the committee’s vote the prior week, when the panel’s Democratic members rejected the same request over concerns about staffing shortages and delays in releasing incarcerated people already eligible for parole, factors they said were driving overcrowding in prisons and jails statewide.

Three Democrats — Sen. Jeff Bridges and Reps. Kyle Brown and Emily Sirota — supported the request on Jan. 28, joining Republicans Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer and Rep. Rick Taggart. Sen. Judy Amabile, a Democrat, cast the lone no vote.

Supporters said rejecting the funding could push more people sentenced to state prison into county custody while they await transfer, and could worsen conditions inside state facilities if temporary housing or double-bunking became more common.

“If we don’t approve these beds, it’s going to cost us more money that we don’t have,” Sirota said, according to an article from The Colorado Sun.

Brown said lawmakers are still looking for a workable strategy to reduce population pressure. “But I don’t know exactly how to communicate any better to the governor’s office that the plan that they are working under, whatever we’re calling it, is not working,” Brown said, according to an article from The Colorado Sun.

Republicans on the committee argued the state lacks space in the corrections system and that additional beds are needed even as broader reforms are debated.

Amabile said she remained focused on releasing more eligible people rather than increasing capacity, pointing to incarcerated people who have been approved or are eligible for parole but remain in custody because of housing or programming gaps.

After the vote, Kyle Giddings, deputy director of the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, criticized the committee’s shift. “The question for the members who switched their votes is simple: what do Coloradans actually get from this decision?” Giddings said, according to an article from The Colorado Sun.

Giddings also argued the state’s budget shortfall should heighten scrutiny of new corrections spending and called for more transparency and accountability.

Lawmakers noted the approval was a midyear funding adjustment. The committee and the full legislature will still write and debate the next fiscal year budget, when the Department of Corrections budget could be revisited.

This article is based on reporting originally published by The Colorado Sun on Jan. 28, 2026.