COLORADO: Proposed ballot measure mandates violent offenders serve most of prison time prior to parole.

Michael Fields, President of Advance Colorado is currently pursuing a ballot initiative for 2024 that would mandate violent offenders serve a large percentage of their sentence before being released back into the public.

Fields said his initiative is the result of a 2021 crime in which Kenneth Dean Lee was arrested for impersonating an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent to an Aurora family and then sexually assaulting their 7-year-old daughter while they were in the home.

At the time of his arrest, Lee was on parole for similar crimes he committed a decade earlier. For those crimes, Lee was sentenced to 23 years to life but was released after serving nine and half years, or just 40 percent of his sentence.

If passed, Initiative 71 — which it is known as for now — would force violent offenders to serve most of their sentences, possibly lowering the recidivism rates and reducing crime in Colorado, Fields said.

Locking up violent offenders — it just might work!