The General Assembly could direct the Department of Corrections to eliminate privately run prisons by 2025 if a draft bill passes next session.

The Prison Population Management Interim Study Committee released a proposal, first reported in The Denver Post, that directed the DOC to use “evidence-based strategies” and perform an “analysis of the resources necessary” to move prisoners out of the three private prisons among the state’s 25 facilities.

Dean Williams, the department’s director, said he was “concerned about any part of the prison or correctional system where there’s a profit incentive,” according to The Post report. “At the same time, I realize that we rely upon three private prisons to provide bed space–beds that we need.”

Any analysis as directed in the bill would also examine the effects on local communities from the loss of prison jobs and revenue, such as in rural Las Animas, Walsenburg and Burlington, where CoreCivic operates facilities.

The committee wants the DOC to weigh in on how to move inmates to alternative facilities or programs. However, CoreCivic and GEO Group, another large prison corporation, also operate community treatment and transition programs in the state. (The bill would not affect GEO’s immigrant detention center in Aurora.)

The Sentencing Project lists Colorado as the state with the seventh-largest percentage of inmates in private prisons as of 2016. Since 2004, the percentage has been as low as 18 percent and as high as 27 percent.

Under previous legislative direction, the state is also preparing a vacant facility in Centennial to house prisoners in its 948 cells. The draft bill requires the DOC to reduce the private prison population by one inmate for every person housed in Centennial. Colorado’s private prisons house 3,867 individuals.