As the dust settles on a primary election that should alert Coloradans to the downward dive public safety may take in November — our current attorney general and secretary of state have presided over a state that is now America’s eighth-worst for violent crime and third-worst for property crime — we must remember the ongoing efforts of the most offender-friendly legislature in our lifetimes.

This year, Democrats in control of our General Assembly found yet another way to diminish accountability for criminals who victimize us, while at the same time working to drive up our insurance costs. Two birds with one bong.

The “victims must pay for crime” bill was sponsored by a predictable trio of crime-apologists. State Sen. Mike “Lex Luther” Weissman, state Rep. Yara “Criminals Are The True Victims” Zokaie, and state Rep. Cecelia Espenoza (former appellate immigration judge) crafted House Bill 26-1017 with one overriding goal in mind: shift the cost of property crime to insurance companies.

Signed by Gov. Jared Polis, who is on track to oversee the greatest period of insurance premium increases for Coloradans in memory, this offender-friendly bill limits the amount of restitution a court can order a convicted criminal to pay — to any deductible that you, the victim, paid. The law specifically prohibits insurance companies from recovering losses they sustained by covering the costs of crime. The logic is obvious: insurance money is self-generating, grows on trees and insurance companies will simply swallow any additional losses they suffer. In Progressive Bizarro World, that is.

The message to criminals is clear: steal a car, burglarize a home, engage in organized and repeated retail theft of neighborhood stores, or just choose to burn down a business or home, do not worry; the court is forbidden to impose any order to make a convicted felon pay one penny more than his victim’s insurance deductible. If a victim does not want to make a claim on their insurance and risk a premium increase — too bad, say Weissman, Zokaie and Espenoza. The law does not allow any court-ordered restitution for “losses which a victim may be compensated through a private insurance company.” Restitution is limited to the victim’s deductible, whether they make a claim or not. For these Dems, victims and insurance companies can afford it, criminals should not have to.

The Democrats appear to believe insurance companies are sitting on a pot of cash they do not deserve and with which they will gladly part. That is the ignorant thinking of the socialist, property-rights-hating crowd. These legislators — who have spent a cup of coffee in the private sector — would say “insurance companies can still sue the criminals in civil court and recover their losses that way.” That is dumb. If insurance companies went through the exorbitant cost of hiring attorneys to sue every covered loss suffered due to criminal conduct, those expenses would not be swallowed by the insurance company. Nope. They would be passed along to us in the form of higher premiums. But insurance companies will not go through that expense and ridiculous waste of time. They do not have to. Instead, they will simply raise our premiums to cover their losses.

Just like that, Coloradans will foot the bill their own losses caused by the criminals they seek to coddle. It is yet another tax — or fee — on us, or whatever the Dems want to call it.

Of course, Democrats made sure to carve out exceptions for government losses to worker’s compensation, Medicare and Medicaid. The attorney general will not have to chase a criminal through the civil court system to recover those losses. The government protects its property, and cares nothing for ours.

Combined with their repeated efforts to diminish the penalties for drug crimes, maintain probation eligibility for child rapists and making murders eligible for early release from prison (to name a few), the party in charge of state government at every level has declared its allegiance to the criminal element — over us.

There is an unintended, yet very real consequence, of this legislative absolution of criminal responsibility.

In courtrooms throughout Colorado, defense attorneys regularly argue to judges their convicted clients should not go to prison or jail, because their clients need to be free to work to pay off the massive restitution they owe the victims they created. Judges regularly use that justification (despite the failure of those allowed to remain free to pay off restitution) to avoid incarcerating criminals. That ends in August, when this law goes into effect.

Defendants who have caused significant losses will be freed of the burden of having to pay back their victims and can now spend the time they have earned behind bars — contemplating the wrongness of their conduct, the value of the Rule of Law, and the lesson legislators have yet to learn: actions have consequences.

George Brauchler is the 23rd Judicial District attorney and former district attorney for the 18th Judicial District. He has served as an Owens Early Criminal Justice Fellow at the Common Sense Institute. Follow him on Twitter  @GeorgeBrauchler.