Welcome to What’s Your Agenda?: The Colorado Politics’ weekly publication of trade association priorities for the state’s 2026 legislative session. 

The Colorado District Attorneys’ Council provides training, resources, and legislative support to every prosecutor in the state. In order to take a position on an issue, all 23 elected district attorneys must be in agreement. These are the priorities they set for the 2026 legislative session:

Fix Colorado’s broken competency system
Under current Colorado law, when a defendant is found incompetent and unlikely to be restored in the near future, the judge must dismiss the case almost immediately. This is resulting in dangerous situations across Colorado as people accused of murder, violent crimes, and sex offenses are turned
loose without any oversight. Many have reoffended, only to be let right back into the community. Colorado needs a responsible competency system, one designed to both protect the community and make sure defendants get the treatment they need. This includes a new pathway to
move cases from criminal courts into the civil competency system before dismissal, but only after exhausting efforts to restore competency and seek accountability for criminal acts.

Protecting homicide victims
Vehicular-related deaths must be treated seriously if we are to keep drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians safe on Colorado streets, but it’s an area where some of Colorado’s laws are weakest. Vehicular homicides and assaults devastate countless Colorado families every year, but current law in this area
does not always provide for a sentence that adequately reflects the severity of the crime. Aligning Colorado’s laws to treat severe driving crimes as the serious offenses that they are would not only bring relief to those victims’ families but also make Colorado’s roads safer at the same time.

Sex offender sentencing
It is essential that individuals convicted of sex offenses face consequences that are proportional to the severity and lasting harm of their crimes, while ensuring they are not released from prison before it is safe for them to be reintroduced into the community. A fair and effective sentencing framework must establish meaningful prison terms to ensure victims receive the justice they deserve. Indeterminate sentencing remains a critical tool in this process to protect the public, as it allows the release decision to be based on demonstrated rehabilitation and risk rather than arbitrary timelines.

Ensuring victim voices are heard
Reliable and certain sentences are essential for justice to function. Victims must be able to trust a judge’s ruling about how long a perpetrator will remain incarcerated while they look to rebuild their sense of safety, closure, and their lives. Sentencing outcomes shape perceptions of justice and finality.
Reopening those decisions re-litigates the seriousness of the crime and destabilizes the sense of resolution. So-called “Second look” proceedings also retraumatize victims through notifications, media attention, and the expectation that they relive their experiences through testimony for a situation many have spent years trying to overcome. Criminal sentencing and parole decisions are most effective when they account not only for institutional behavior or rehabilitation metrics, but also the lasting impact and
The profound impact the crime had on the victims.

Protect legal law enforcement tools
Modern crime is mobile, digital, and fast-moving. Law Enforcement must have access to modern tools in order to quickly corroborate information, verify alibis, locate witnesses, and eliminate suspects. Preventing or limiting only law enforcement from using publicly available data from surveillance cameras,
automatic license plate readers or public databases doesn’t eliminate the data itself – it just creates dangerous information black holes, delays justice for victims, and decreases a police officer’s ability to
obtain the truth.