Colorado’s new executive director of corrections said he will unveil on Friday reforms and policy changes to the parole system when he appears before state legislators, reports the Denver Post. “The corrections you see today will be much different starting tomorrow,” Rick Raemisch told reporters who pressed him for details after the first day of legislative hearings on parole’s shortcomings.
He said he wanted to first reveal the changes to legislators during his scheduled testimony on Friday. The joint Judiciary Committee, which has oversight over the Colorado Department of Corrections, scheduled the hearings to review parole problems in the wake of the slaying in March of former prisons chief Tom Clements, allegedly by a parolee. A recent audit by the federal National Institute of Corrections criticized Colorado’s practice of leaving it up to parole officers to decide 90 percent of the time whether parolees should receive intensive supervision.