The Denver City Council approved a $1.5 million contract Monday with B.I. Incorporated – owned by private prison giant GEO Group – for electronic monitoring equipment through Jan. 31, 2025.

This comes after the council voted to cut ties with GEO Group in 2019, ending $10 million of contracts with GEO Group and CoreCivic, another private prison company, which ran halfway houses in Denver. Though the council later temporarily extended the contracts, council members said investing in the companies, which also run immigrant detention facilities, contradicts with the city’s goal of welcoming immigrants.

Monday’s vote revived the 2019 debate, with some council members arguing that they shouldn’t support GEO Group in any way, even though the current contract only provides equipment, not services.

“We’ve beat this horse to death,” Councilwoman Candi CdeBaca said. “When we say divest, I think we should truly divest. We’ve had several years to line up a different contract. … I’m frustrated that it’s back in front of us given that we’ve stated clearly our issues with this company.”

In the end, the contract passed in a 10 to 3 vote, with CdeBaca, Councilwoman Jamie Torres and Councilman Chris Hinds voting no.

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The contract will fund electronic monitoring equipment for individuals who are under pretrial release or house arrest to monitor court ordered conditions of release. This includes monitoring suspects arrested for domestic violence to assure the suspects stay away from their accused victims.

Greg Mauro, director of Denver’s Division of Community Corrections, said he didn’t bring the contract forward lightly, but he believed he had to do it, calling it “in the best interest for the Department of Safety.” A second vendor will also be proposed in the coming weeks to provide similar equipment, though Mauro described the equipment as inferior.

“I have a responsibility to advance, operationally, what’s best for Community Corrections and the Department of Safety,” Mauro said. “The belief the department has is that it’s the combination of vendors that gives us the greatest operational perspective to perform these services. … The B.I. equipment, we believe, are better pieces of equipment.”

Mauro said the equipment from B.I. Incorporated was chosen by a committee that did not take into consideration the City Council’s decision to cut ties with private prison companies. He said the equipment was preferred because of its unique features, including tampering detection and comfort and fit for users.

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If the contract was shot down, approximately 700 people on electronic monitoring would have had to be transitioned from the existing B.I. equipment to different equipment from a new vendor, Mauro said.

During Monday’s discussion, some council members seemed to question whether the City Council made the right decision to move away from private prison companies in 2019. Mauro said the city has not recovered from ending the contracts with GEO Group and CoreCivic, saying the city is still down 350 beds in halfway houses, keeping people in jail who would have otherwise been released.

“The reality is the action that was taken did not result in a better situation for the people we’re trying to serve,” Councilwoman Debbie Ortega said. “There are fewer beds and more people are on a waitlist.”

“At the end of the day, I would rather folks be out of jail and be utilizing electronic monitoring,” Council President Stacie Gilmore said, adding that she was voting in favor of Monday’s contract “as not to negatively affect possibly hundreds of individuals’ lives.”

On Monday, the council also approved a $748,020 contract with Sill-Terhar Motors to purchase 21 Ford Interceptor Utility Vehicles for the Denver Police Department. The contract passed in an 11 to 2 vote with CdeBaca and Torres voting no.

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