In Colorado, as in Texas state jails, many inmates are simply released after serving their terms without any supervision, tracking, or reentry guidance to obtain a job, housing, or solid plan for beginning a free life.

But one program in Colorado aims to change this approach—after seeing its success in Canada. The “Long-Term Offender Program” only is open to certain inmates in Colorado—those 45 and older, with a prison term of at least 15 years, and excluding sex offenders and arsonist. Inmates must have behaved well while in prison, acknowledged their crimes, and expressed remorse.

If accepted, inmates are first paired with a mentor—another former inmate who has already gone through the reentry experience and can provide first-hand guidance. The inmate then attends pre-release programming while in prison, which provides job training, develops technology skills, counseling, and seminars on families and victims. The program requires inmates to develop a “transition plan,” which specifically outlines their plans to get a job, housing, and financial issues.

At that point, a selection committee determines whether to approve the inmate to participate in a work release program, where the inmate works during the day and reports to a county jail in the evenings to sleep. If the inmate successfully completes the work release requirements, he can then transfer to a halfway house for a very small portion of the end of his or her term, a cheaper alternative to prison beds that still provide supervision. If that term is successful, the inmate can step down to an ankle monitoring system for one year, with additional parole supervision for five more years after that.

Such a gradual step-down provides intense supervision until corrections officials can have more assurance that ex-offenders are ready for a life beyond bars. In addition, the focus on gainful employment and steady housing can prevent two of the biggest predictors of recidivism (joblessness and homelessness) from affecting this class of offenders.

This program emerges as other states, and even the federal government, consider more intensive reentry programming as a way to reduce recidivism and put ex-offenders on the right track.

Conservatives in Colorado should be paying close attention to new legislative efforts to address a problem that is ignored far too often: collateral consequences.

Late last year, National Review published a piece by Mitch Pearlstein, in which he explained that “[c]ollateral sanctions [or consequences] include any legal penalty, disability, or disadvantage imposed automatically upon conviction: for example, ineligibility for various jobs, such as school-bus driver or property manager for an apartment building. Collateral consequences encompass the full range of bad things and debilitating restrictions—official or unofficial, codified or not—that regularly confront people after they’ve served their sentences.”

Interestingly, Pearlstein noted that collateral consequences, which some lawmakers applaud, have a detrimental effect on marriage rates, and in the long run, this problem likely contributes to increased recidivism: “Research verifies common sense by showing that married men are less likely than single men to break the law. Getting married is thus a good way for a man to help himself avoid getting locked up. But what about single men who have already been charged with committing crimes? They are less attractive marriage partners, not just because they may be incarcerated, but because rap sheets are not conducive to good-paying, family-supporting jobs. By not marrying, they lose a major source of support in straightening out their lives. How can they escape this trap?”

It is a significant problem and one that Colorado legislators are taking seriously. On February 13th, the Colorado Senate Judiciary Committee passed a bill which grants courts the discretion to remove various collateral consequences that affect employment, licensing, and housing for offenders who have been held accountable and served their sentences. The bill, which is known as the Restoration for People with Criminal Records Act, would also seal records of petty offenses that were not previously sealable in Colorado. Senator Pat Steadman, the sponsor, has an extensive write-up of the bill on his website. He notes, in part that “[s]tudies have shown that the biggest indicators of success after prison are stable employment and housing, [but w]ithout these supports, people released from prison are likely to be part of our unfortunately high recidivism rate.” At the February 13th committee hearing, Senator Steadman asked perhaps the most important question of all: “Does this particular prohibition on felons really make the public safer?”

Follow the progress of the Colorado bill here. It is also worth reading Professor Michael Sweig’s interesting personal testimony on the bill here.