I spent today in Cañon City touring three prisons managed by the Colorado Department of Corrections. Since I was on a tour with my old boss, Justice Eid, we spent most of the day with the "model" prisoners at the Old Territorial prison, the Arrow Head facility, and Four Mile, where we had lunch cooked and served by offenders enrolled in the culinary arts program.
The Department of Corrections runs a facinating business known as Colorado Correctional Industries, which uses prison labor (sex and drug offenders, specifically) to train wild horses for the BLM, grow feed crops, raise fish, and manufacture anything from bear-proof trash bins to fiberglass, among other things. They even run a full-time dairy with a herd of 1,800 head. The most interesting program, however, is called K9 Companion, a service that uses prisoners to train pound puppies and other dogs. So if you have a misbehaved dog, I highly recommend sending it to prison; the dogs were extremely well-trained, and the prisoners in the program were the nicest we met all day.
That said, all was not sweetness and light. Our last stop landed us at the Colorado State Penitentiary, a level five SuperMax facility where offenders spend 23 hours a day in solitary confinement, and an hour exercising. The CSP houses the worst of the worst, and even some worse than that who end up in solitary confinement, which we also toured. The eyes of one of these types embodied pure evil.
We also toured the execution chamber, where those on death row end their incarceration, in a manner of speaking. I will not comment on that experience, except to say that I couldn't wait to leave.
