(The Center Square) – Legislators working on Colorado’s budget are considering an increase for daily per-person costs for private prisons.
State Sen. Judy Amabile, D-Boulder, provided a budget briefing to the Joint Judiciary Committee, where she said Gov. Jared Polis is requesting to increase the daily amount spent per inmate from $66.52 to $80. This covers housing them in prisons and related services.
She said Colorado has a lot of elderly people in its prisons.
The average inmate in Colorado is 40 years old, and that age is increasing every year, Amabile said during the committee meeting at the Capitol.
The costs to run Colorado prisons have gone up “dramatically,” including hiring, food and inmate transportation, she told the senators and representatives in Denver.
The senator said if Colorado wants to continue its sentencing structure and not provide “avenues for release for people who are safe,” the state will need to continue to pay for more prison beds.
Ten percent of Colorado’s prisons are privately run.
Colorado did not change its private prison’s daily rate per person at the same time it changed its county jail rate.
Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, R-Larimer, said Colorado’s daily per-person rate for housing someone in a county jail is $77, which was changed in 2023.
Some counties think this rate is not enough when medical costs are factored in, Kirkmeyer said. She noted the counties think the actual daily rate per person should be between $120 and $150.
The daily rate per person in private prisons includes pharmaceuticals but not hospital visits, Kirkmeyer said.
Rep. Rick Taggart, R-Mesa, said one issue hurting Colorado’s budget is the lack of clinicians working for the state Department of Corrections.
The department has 89 open clinician vacancies, Kirkmeyer estimated.
She described the contracts with external medical services as “more expensive” than internal medical services.
Colorado is “doing a great deal of medical services externally as compared to internally,” Taggart noted.
The state government estimated that 55% of Colorado’s inmates as of November 2025 had medical needs.
Colorado can’t serve the inmates in its Department of Corrections “without spending a lot more money,” Amable noted. The Boulder legislator added that the state is seeing a “dramatic rise in the number of people who are being incarcerated and a reduction in the number of releases.”
Mark Ferrandino, director of Colorado’s Office of State Planning and Budgeting, sent a letter to Colorado’s Joint Budget Committee earlier this month saying Colorado will exceed its inmate capacity limits as soon as fiscal year 2027-28.
The state currently has a 2.4% inmate vacancy rate as of Jan. 9, including 0.5% for male inmates, Ferrandino told the legislative committee.
The Colorado Division of Criminal Justice estimated Colorado’s inmate population would increase 4.5% from fiscal year 2024-2025 to fiscal year 2025-2026.
Furthermore, the division said Colorado’s inmate population would increase again by 2.8% from fiscal year 2025-2026 to fiscal year 2026-2027.
This comes out to an estimated 17,281 inmates.
On Wednesday, the Legislature’s Joint Budget Committee voted 4-2 against Polis’ request for money for more prison beds. The four who voted against it are Democrats, whose party hold majorities in both houses.
