A recent report from the Common Sense Institute lays out some pretty sobering facts about crime in Colorado. Among their findings:

• From 2011 to 2023, Colorado’s crime rate rose 26%, which includes crimes against persons (2%), crimes against society (16%) and motor vehicle thefts (225%);
• The number of police officers per 1,000 people in the state lags behind the national average;
• The percentage of employees in Colorado law enforcement agencies who are police officers decreased from 69% in 2013 to 65% in 2023;
• From 2010 to 2022, the number of uniformed police officers fielded by the Denver Police Department declined 15.1% while those fielded by the Colorado Springs Police Department rose by 5.7%; and
• At the same time, the crime rate rose in Denver rose by 32% and decreased in Colorado Springs, by 15.9%

Now those sorts of figures make extrapolation rather easy. The authors of that study include Dr. Steven Byers, who is a professional economist, and D.J. Summers, an experienced policy analyst and former investigative journalist, who together provide the requisite academic and analytical musculature to the report. Rounding it out is former Denver Police Chief Paul Pazen, who adds the experience and credibility that uniquely comes from a career spent going down society’s darkest alleys. The bottom line of the report: efforts directed toward putting more well-trained police officers on the street will most likely result in those streets being safer.

Last week this space was given over to an argument in favor of supporting a ballot measure enshrining educational choice in the constitution. I make the same plea for two public safety related measures: 128 and, especially, 130.

Stay up to speed: Sign up for daily opinion in your inbox Monday-Friday

Proposition 128 requires those convicted of violent crimes to serve at least 85% of their sentence before eligibility for parole, or considered for discretionary early release, i.e. for good behavior. Current law allows inmates to apply for parole after completing 75% of their sentence and allows for earlier discretionary release. The measure would also require anyone convicted three or more times of a violent offense to serve their entire sentence, without possibility of parole or early release.

Proposition 130 requires the state government to set aside $350 million from the general fund to create a “peace officer training and support fund” for the purposes of, one, paying for a million-dollar benefit to the survivors of law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty and, two, providing grants to police departments and sheriff’s offices for training and retention.

Prop 128’s provisions are a sort of truth-in-sentencing requirement, and are appealing on that fact alone. There is a beauty, or perhaps a sense of justice, in the simplicity of a concept that says a sentence of X-number of years means the offender will serve X-number of years. Incarceration is a complicated subject, and we ought to be open to conversations around the alternative forms of punishment — because punishment needs to remain a critical part of the equation.

But there is little room for maneuver on the fact that certain people do belong in prisons for the crimes they commit. These would include violent crimes, the ones contemplated by this measure. This would seem especially so concerning people who have committed — and been caught and successfully prosecuted for — those crimes more than twice. If John Jones is in jail rather than at liberty, he can’t commit violent crimes as regularly as he has proven disposed to.

An even easier case can be made for Prop 130. It is not a coincidence the supererogatory documentations of the rise in crime over the past few years have coincided directly with the drop in the number of police officers deployed to deal with it. This measure does not address every element of that decrease — much of it has to do with the advent of attitudes and policies driven by elected officials whose sympathies consciously or subconsciously go to the lawbreaker rather than to law enforcement. But it does address a key deficiency by providing adequate funding, not to mention setting aside a little for the families of slain officers, as a token of the tremendous debt of gratitude we as a society owe them.

There are, of course, opponents of the measure, many of whom cite fancy theoretical arguments concerning alternative approaches to justice. However, it is the person who is robbed or assaulted, and learns through the process that there is little if any hope of effective prosecution, that the odds are the offender will be released on his or her own recognizance and ultimately receive a suspended sentence, probation, or just a short time in jail — after which time the thief or assaulter will be free to rob and beat again — and ultimately despondently concludes the time and effort was hardly worth it; it is that person, more than abstract theoretical arguments, that ought to inform the discussion.

Kelly Sloan is a political and public affairs consultant and a recovering journalist based in Denver.