Colorado’s growing competency backlog for criminal defendants is costing the state millions of dollars in fines each year and jeopardizing public safety, according to a new report by the think tank Common Sense Institute.

The report, published on Thursday, found that inpatient competency evaluation orders have increased by 600% in the past 25 years, while restoration service orders have risen by over 1,200%.

Following the 2019 resolution of a federal lawsuit regarding excessive wait times for court-ordered competency services, the Colorado Department of Human Services was ordered under a consent decree to expand its community-based services, speed up inpatient admissions, and provide treatment for people in jail awaiting competency services. The agency can be fined up to $12 million each year it fails to meet its court-ordered service deadlines.

As of June, more than 350 inmates were awaiting court-mandated competency restoration.

The Department of Human Services is required to pay a fine of anywhere from $100 to $500 a day for keeping an inmate on the competency waitlist longer than 28 days — last year, the average wait time to receive competency restoration was 110 days.

“Colorado is paying interest on its incompetency problem without ever touching the principal,” said John Kellner, a CSI Fellow who co-authored the study. “Instead of reducing wait times, our state is releasing dangerous offenders into the community and spending millions on fines that don’t fix the problem.”

Last year, state lawmakers passed House Bill 1034, a response to the 2019 consent decree. The law required courts to dismiss charges when a defendant is found incompetent to proceed. It also sought to decrease the corrections department’s workload by expanding outpatient community-based restoration services.

Since the bill’s passage, several high-profile cases in which individuals who committed violent crimes have had their charges dropped due to incompetence, gaining national attention, including a registered sex offender who allegedly attempted to kidnap a child in Aurora and a 21-year-old Greeley man who was charged with attempted murder.

The cases have ignited debate over the state’s competency laws, with advocates and lawmakers from both sides of the aisle calling for changes.

According to the Common Sense Institute report, many individuals declared incompetent due to mental illness are unable to get treatment, as the primary inpatient competency restoration facilities, located in Pueblo and Centennial, only have 94 beds, and only 70 of them are funded.

The report made several recommendations to help resolve the backlog, including implementing automatic inpatient admission and treatment for defendants found incompetent and decreasing operating costs per bed for competency restoration patients.

Read the full report here.