Members of two Colorado agencies took turns explaining how the other agency was to blame for not evaluating sex offenders as possible sexually violent predators at a legislative hearing last week.
A court administration official said some of the evaluations could have been done after sex offenders went to prison. Then a Department of Corrections official said prison therapists believed that sexual predator evaluations would be done before sentencing.
"The front end was expecting the back end to do it, and the back end was expecting the front end to do it," said Rep. Gwyn Green, a Democrat from Jefferson County.
Green and other state lawmakers - including Andrew Romanoff, House speaker; Dan Grossman, Senate Judiciary Committee chairman; and Sen. Norma Anderson - scolded the state officials for failing to perform the mandated evaluations.
Romanoff said the legislators are meeting to determine whether Colorado's criteria for identifying sexually violent predators need to be rewritten.
He called the meeting after The Denver Post reported on May 29 that since Colorado's predator law took effect in 1999, only two men not in prison have been labeled as sexually violent predators, even though more than 1,300 men and women met the initial criteria to be labeled predators. Another 28 men and women identified as sexually violent predators are still in prison. The label triggers a state requiring active notification of the predator's neighbors.
As a result of the stories, Gov. Bill Owens also created the Governor's Task Force on Sexually Violent Predators last week.
According to state law, Grossman said, the probation department was to do the evaluations before sentencing, and Corrections Department experts were to do the tests before parole hearings.
Corrections officials said none of the evaluations had been done before they were contacted by the newspaper, and court administration officials said they don't know how many were completed.