Youthful Offender System Updates

Plain English Breakdown

The official summary does not provide details on the exact nature of disabilities or conditions covered.

Youthful Offender System Updates

This law updates the Youthful Offender System in Colorado, focusing on better care and support for young people involved with the system.

What This Bill Does

• Updates references to juveniles and young adults who are eligible for or participating in the system.
• Revises legislative intent provisions to emphasize lasting behavioral changes, trauma-informed care, addressing criminogenic risk, accountability, healthy relationship building, and system participant and staff safety.
• Expresses the general assembly's intent that juveniles and young adults with disabilities receive equitable treatment and reasonable accommodations in sentencing and within the system.
• Adds data related to system completion rates to an existing annual reporting requirement for the department.
• Adds requirements for evidence-informed rehabilitative treatment, life skills programming, individual therapy, family therapy, or substance use disorder treatment.

Who It Names or Affects

• Young people who are part of or could join the Youthful Offender System
• The Department of Corrections

Terms To Know

Youthful Offender System

A special program in Colorado that helps young people who break laws by giving them support and training.

Trauma-informed care

Care that understands how past traumatic experiences can affect a person's behavior and health, and tries to help without causing more harm.

Limits and Unknowns

• The bill does not specify exactly what kind of disabilities or conditions are covered.
• It is unclear from the summary if there will be new funding for these changes.

Official Summary Text

Current law establishes the youthful offender system (system) in the department of corrections (department) as a sentencing option that provides a continuum of services. The act:
Updates references to the juveniles and young adults who are eligible for or participating in the system;
Revises certain legislative intent provisions to emphasize lasting behavioral changes in preparation for reentry, trauma-informed care, addressing criminogenic risk, accountability, healthy relationship building, and system participant and staff safety;
Expresses the general assembly's intent that juveniles and young adults with physical, intellectual, mental, or behavioral health disabilities or conditions receive equitable treatment in sentencing to the system and reasonable accommodations once in the system;
Adds certain data related to system completion rates to an existing annual reporting requirement for the department;
Adds requirements for evidence-informed rehabilitative treatment and life skills programming and for individual therapy, family therapy, or substance use disorder treatment;
Establishes requirements for system participant evaluations, plans for addressing participants' needs and skills, and case manager duties;
Requires the department, in consultation with relevant experts, to make and publish on its website recommendations for integrating a trauma-informed standard of care with current system practices to promote the health and safety of system participants; and
Expands certain procedural protections for system participants with mental or behavioral health conditions or intellectual and developmental disabilities.
(Note: This summary applies to this bill as enacted.)