I spent most of my first semester in graduate school in the Master of Public Policy program at the University of Colorado Denver researching and writing about the old and new Colorado Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice (CCJJ) that culminated in a major term paper Policy Memo assignment (that I got an A on).

The Colorado state legislature chose not to continue the old CCJJ last year, which meant the end, the “sunsetting,” of the old CCJJ. Governor Polis was not happy that the lawmakers ended the CCJJ, so he issued Executive Order 2023-002 to create the new Working Group On Transforming Criminal & Juvenile Justice, which as he explained in a public statement, is to replace the old CCJJ, which he expects the legislature to pass this year. The legislature already chose to end it, so it will be interesting to see if they stand by their original position or give in to the governor, law enforcement and district attorney pressures to pass it.

In the Policy Memo not only was I able to identify the CCJJ as a part of a bigger iron triangle policy monopoly that excluded affected citizens in the decision process, but one of my conclusions is a suggestion that they create affected citizen working subgroups at the table, including a way to do that. In fact, it was that paper that led to the idea for the other class (economics) term paper titled Equitizing Citizen Inputs In Policy Decisions that led to this Citizen Policy Work Group and website idea as a test project.

Because this site and the whole Citizen Policy Work Groups idea is barely a few weeks old, I’m still thinking through the logistics but since the new CCJJ working group has already met and is preparing their strategy for legislative approval in March, I thought I’d at least get my policy memo uploaded here as a starting point from which to add update posts related to the new CCJJ as the legislative session progresses.

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Post Author: Krystyn Hartman is a graduate student in the Masters of Public Policy program at the University of Colorado School of Public Affairs. This site is a test research project.

Policy Work Groups posts are an extension of citizen PolicyWorkGroups.com.