On the heels of groundbreaking new research into skyrocketing crime in Colorado, Gazette Editor Vince Bzdek’s Sunday column underscores one of the most important findings. Notably, that putting wrongdoers behind bars makes our communities safer. And failing to do so has left us in peril.

You’d think it would go without saying. Yet, as the Common Sense Institute’s blockbuster study, released last week, points out, Colorado’s policy makers have been ignoring that straightforward logic for years. We are all now reaping what they have sown.

The study not only tallied the state’s soaring violent and property crime over the past decade, but it also reaffirmed the fundamental link between incarceration and public safety. The study found that the number of convicts behind bars at Colorado prisons dropped an astounding 23% from 2008 to this year – while the total number of crimes per year exploded by 47%.

Alongside that finding, the report tracked the use of “personal recognizance” bonds letting criminal suspects out of jail without bail in Denver, one of the state’s largest judicial districts. The bonds’ use jumped 61% over the last two years. It has created a revolving door that leads from arrest back to the streets. It’s no surprise that, as the Common Sense study also found, Colorado’s rate of repeat offenders ranks our state among the top five in the nation.

The Gazette’s Bzdek cites a prominent study from the 1990s by noted University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt. He zeroed in on the most effective steps taken by policy makers across the country in the wake of the last big crime wave. Among the measures that had the biggest impact, Levitt found, were putting more police on the streets – and more convicts in prison. Not only was a higher percentage of offenders taken off the street than in today’s Colorado, but also the increased threat of punishment was a deterrent to criminals.

Colorado has done the opposite, and it’s paying the price.

As Bzdek also notes in his column, an unintended consequence of the back-to-prison movement was that more people of color – chiefly Black and Hispanic young men – were jailed. The self-styled “justice reform” movement has decried that development, and it has been a prime motivation for their efforts, and those by ruling Democrats at Colorado’s Capitol, to reduce the prison population.

The role of race and ethnicity in crime in Colorado and the U.S. in general has always been complex. Different racial and ethnic groups have been disproportionately incarcerated, whether by design or default, throughout U.S. history.

What today’s would-be justice reformers fail to acknowledge is that people of color in Colorado and elsewhere also are disproportionately victimized by crime. As just one index: As recently as 2019, 54.7% of all U.S. homicide victims were Black. Black people make up only 13.4% of the U.S. population. It’s an imbalance that cries out for real reform – i.e., a return to law and order.

Colorado’s people of color should not be expected to shoulder a disproportionate share of crime’s burden on society. They, and the rest of Colorado, deserve justice. Let’s start by putting more wrongdoers behind bars, where they belong.

Denver Gazette editorial board