Crime and punishment – Colorado has big problems with the former because fringe ideologues in the legislature don’t believe in the latter. 

With a little more than a third of the session in the books, one issue that best illustrates the ideological chasm between the parties is criminal justice. 

Let’s look at some examples and then focus on why.

One of the scars on the soul of our state and nation is child sex trafficking. Colorado has a disparity between sentencing for those who commit sexual acts on a child and those who buy or sell children for sexual purposes. A bipartisan bill would have ended that disparity and required mandatory minimum sentences for the buying and selling of children, among other crimes. 

Passed unanimously right? Nope. Shot down in committee on a party-line vote. 

The central reason? Progressives don’t believe in mandatory sentences, seeing them as counterproductive and discriminatory – against criminals.

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One liberal group, the Brennan Center for Justice, argues for the dismantling of the prison system altogether, referring to it as a “human caging system.” They claim rather than making communities safer, taking violent criminals off the street creates more crime.  

This same commitment to criminals over victims emerged in the consideration of “Truth in Sentencing” legislation.

Victims and law enforcement have expressed concern violent criminals serve just 43% of their sentences on average. Liberals who reject prison time as a societal solution view this as a good thing. 

Why not put victims and communities first and require violent offenders serve at least 85% of their sentences?

Opposition in committee from the hard left disputed Colorado even has a crime problem, said it is impossible to accurately measure the rate at which criminals re-offend and claimed more prison time doesn’t make communities safer. 

This one was shot down, too, again on a party-line vote. Watch for this measure to return on this fall’s ballot in an initiative sponsored by Advance Colorado – and it will pass with big numbers.  

Coloradans are also fed up with the liberal laxity on school safety. In dozens of public school districts, educators have chosen to be professionally trained to use firearms to defend their schools and their students as a supplement to local law enforcement. 

These educators, and their districts, have opted into intensive training, usually through FASTER – one of the national leaders in providing this enhanced school safety. They aren’t tossing Glocks to Marian the Librarian whose familiarity with firearms is limited to knowing that Trigger was Roy Rogers’s horse.

The satisfaction in these communities is high (and we will never know how many shooters have been deterred by knowing a trained and armed educator may be on the other side of the door).

So of course, liberals introduced a bill that would create layers of needless training, bureaucracy and compliance – making it more complicated, expensive and discouraging for educators who may want to step up and protect themselves, their co-workers and their students.  

Why would they push to make Colorado less safe? 

The hard-left has a tough time confronting evil as a reality, whether it’s Hamas, violent repeat offenders or child traffickers. And they certainly don’t like society aggressively confronting and punishing evil.

In their naïve view, if they can just get the right mix of social programs, and if we understand the underlying systematic problems criminals have endured in their lives, prisons could be a thing of the past.  

The rest of us believe the pursuit of happiness includes not only being secure, but feeling secure – in our homes, schools, places of worship and offices. We have the right as citizens to demand violent criminals are punished, taken off our streets and that our schools are the safest places anywhere in Colorado. 

Liberals know their desire to defund the police is a non-starter. So, their mission at the Capitol is to defang the law instead – with Colorado criminals being the big winners.

Sean Duffy, a former deputy chief of staff to Gov. Bill Owens, is a communications and media relations strategist and ghostwriter based in the Denver area.