Colorado Freedom Fund 2022 Year in Review
< All Updates | DECEMBER 2022
In 2022 Colorado Freedom Fund continued to secure pretrial freedom for the most vulnerable Coloradans. In our 5th year of existence we paid bond for neighbors held in cages across the state. We also fought for and won important policy changes to help Bring Our Neighbors Home, laying more groundwork for a safer Colorado free from wealth-based detention.
CFF has a (growing!) team of brilliant, talented, fiercely committed folks, but our greatest strength is community. Thank you for showing up in all the ways that make our liberatory work possible. We’re glad to share some highlights from 2022, and we hope 2023 brings more freedom for all of us.
This year we bought freedom for mothers who spent extended time behind bars waiting for their day in court. The profound disruption of a parent’s incarceration sentences families and children to life-long injury, but a bailout is an act of community solidarity that helps heal the harm.
We set out to raise $22,000 to bring caregivers home, and in one week we surpassed our goal. Your donations helped us buy freedom for moms not just in the Front Range, but also in rural Colorado and from cages hundreds of miles apart.
Thank you!
CFF's annual Mother's Day Bailout has been a Colorado tradition since 2018.
Legislative Progress.
HB22-1067: Clarifying Changes to Ensure Prompt Bond Hearings.
House Sponsors: Reps. Serena Gonzales-Gutierrez & Steven Woodrow
Senate Sponsors: Sens. Pete Lee & Robert Rodriguez
Municipal courts are now required to hold bond hearings within 48 hours of arrest.
In 2021 CFF championed HB21-1280 a bill which required that all state courts hold bond hearings within 48 hours of a person’s arrest. In 2022 we advanced HB22-1067, to extend that same right to folks arrested on municipal offenses.
These lowest-level offenses are often “crimes” of poverty and are closely tied to homelessness, mental health conditions, and substance misuse—such as allegedly sleeping on a park bench, disorderly conduct, or having an open container of alcohol but not having a home in which to consume that alcohol privately.
With the passage of 1280 and 1067 in back-to back years, Colorado made significant progress towards ensuring that people no longer have to spend days and weeks in jail waiting to see a judge for the first time.
Denise Maes, Elisabeth Epps, Rep. Gonzales-Gutierrez, Rep. Woodrow, and Rebecca Wallace celebrate a legislative win at the Colorado State Capitol.
THE RESULTS ARE IN!
HB21-1280 is working to Bring Our Neighbors Home. Statewide data from the first 6 months of bill implementation shows that by mandating weekend bond hearings, more than 3,000 Coloradans were safely and quickly returned to community instead of languishing in jail without ever seeing a judge.
SB22-18: Expand Court Reminder Program.
House Sponsors: Reps. Adrienne Benavidez & Matt Soper
Senate Sponsors: Sens. Pete Lee & John Cooke
Colorado’s text court reminder program is now opt-out, instead of opt-in!
In some Colorado jails, up to ⅓ of “inmates” are incarcerated only for missing a court date! Court reminders are the evidence-based way to improve court appearance rate. That’s why when CFF learned that the state’s court reminder program was severely under-utilized, we got to work to make the program more effective.
To improve usage rates, we championed SB22-18 which updated the court reminder program from opt-in to opt-out. Our bill passed with broad bipartisan support, and we expect usage rates to skyrocket under this new program.
CFF Senior Policy Counsel Rebecca Wallace was appointed by the Colorado Speaker of the House to be a member of the official statewide text reminder working group. We will continue to advance evidence-based policies that help people return to court, resolve their cases, and have the best chance of staying healthy, safe, and free.
“No one gets well in a cell.”
Prioritizing pretrial competency cases.
In 2022 CFF focused additional resources on securing pretrial freedom for our neighbors enduring competency proceedings. Because of an enormous backlog of inpatient treatment beds in Colorado, people across the state are stuck in “competency purgatory,” languishing in cages for months and in some cases well over a year to receive the mental health services that would allow their cases to proceed.
But there is no magic to inpatient treatment that makes it superior to treatment in the community. Because mental health issues are exacerbated by even short jail stays, we prioritize posting bond in competency cases when it is possible and prudent to do so. We also work with legal and social workers to find other ways to secure release for these especially vulnerable folks.
In 2023 our work to help free Coloradans experiencing mental health crises will continue with direct action, as well as with legislative efforts to increase access to mental healthcare without involving cages and cops.
CFF Sustainability and Growth.
In another first for CFF, we earned a multi-year grant which will sustain our work for years to come.
The Colorado Health Foundation awarded CFF an Advancing Advocacy and Justice with Communities of Color Grant. The Foundation is bringing health within reach for Coloradans by engaging closely with communities across the state through policy advocacy and capacity building. This grant allows us to focus on the future while expanding our efforts to advance health, wellness, and safety via pretrial liberty in Colorado.
Welcome Dana Steiner! Legislative policy advocacy plays an essential role in ending wealth-based detention in Colorado. We are thrilled to announce that we hired Dana as CFF Policy Counsel. A graduate of CU Law, Dana worked with CFF as a policy fellow 2021-2022, researching liberatory pretrial policies and monitoring Colorado courts. They now join Rebecca Wallace, Senior Policy Counsel, as a full-time member of our policy team.
Continue to pay bail and buy freedom, as we’ve done since 2018.
Expand our reach by hiring a new team member.
Strengthen our coalition to advance pretrial liberty.
Ensure increased public access to virtual court proceedings.
Pass new legislation to ensure statewide consistency in bond hearings.
Monitor compliance with pretrial reforms including CFF’s priority bills enacted 2019-2022.
Defeat carceral bills that criminalize Coloradans instead of increasing community safety.
What’s Next for CFF? In 2023 we will…
You may have heard…
Colorado elected an abolitionist to the state legislature, y’all.
Please join us in congratulating CFF’s Founder in her new role as Representative-Elect Elisabeth Epps! Come January 2023, Elisabeth will represent Colorado House District 6 at the Capitol, and we are so excited to work closely with her in this next endeavor.
Elisabeth founded Colorado Freedom Fund in 2018, focused on a commitment to end cash bail without replacing it with other forms of carceral detention. She will continue in her role as CFF Executive Director as we expand our team and increase our capacity, both at the capitol and as a revolving community bond fund. We hope this time of transition helps bring us closer to achieving our ultimate goal of bringing all our neighbors safely home.
[As a fiscally sponsored project of a 501c3, CFF does not endorse any political candidates. That doesn’t mean we can’t tell you: we are so proud of our ED!]
How can you help CFF accomplish our goals?
Join the Bring Our Neighbors Home coalition
to help end cash bail in Colorado.
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so that others can learn of our work.
