Solitary Confinement in Colorado Jails: Our Investigative Series
Colorado jails continue to put people with serious mental illness in solitary confinement, even after lawmakers passed reforms in 2021 that were aimed at limiting the practice, according to this new investigation by Bolts and Boulder Reporting Lab.
For months, our newsrooms have collaborated to investigate why people with mental illness continue to be isolated in local jails for weeks at a time—by analyzing state data, obtaining court records that have previously not been reported, and interviewing experts as well as people who suffered from being isolated inside the Boulder County Jail during mental health crises.
Our investigation reveals how state judges, who were intended to be a key safeguard under the new reform law, nearly always approve requests from jails to isolate people with mental illness for extended periods. The resulting stories, by Boulder Reporting Lab senior reporter John Herrick, shed critical light on how sparse community treatment options and a dysfunctional system of competency restoration cycle people in mental health crises through local jails, where they face the kind of prolonged isolation that’s widely recognized as harmful to people with serious mental illness.
Explore the three articles in our series
Colorado Limited Solitary for People with Mental Illness. But Judges Still Routinely Approve It.
The Jail That Replaced Boulder’s Mental Health System
