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Imperial County, one of the most depressed areas in America, has a clean-energy fortune stored deep in an underground reservoir. Can it be extracted, and will downtrodden residents see the benefits?

Kanye West, Herschel Walker seem pleased with the Pandora’s box of horrors they’ve opened. But when mental health comes into play, this game becomes far more insidious.

by Moe Clark, photography by Eli Imadali

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

The last time Iris Román Prieto saw her son, he was leaving their family Christmas Eve party to report back at the Colorado Springs halfway house where he was completing a two-year sentence for burglary.

After arriving at the facility, Robert Román Prieto called to let his mom know that he was safe.

And he then dialed his fiancée, Jasmin Black, who had dropped him off. After 15 minutes, at around 11 p.m., Black heard through the phone a grunt, a thud and then silence.

Alarmed, she called the facility, which is run by ComCor Inc., and pleaded with a staff member to check on Román Prieto, according to a police report.

He was in his bed asleep, the staffer assured her before hanging up.

The lifeless body of Román Prieto, 30, was found around 4:30 a.m. on Dec. 25, 2021, facedown on the bathroom floor, still holding his phone, according to the police report. Nearly five hours had passed since Black’s call asking staff to check on him. Staff told police that the last head count had occurred at midnight, and Román Prieto was not accounted for.

Law enforcement found half a blue pill, later identified as fentanyl, in Román Prieto’s wallet. Security footage showed he had purchased the potent synthetic opioid from two facility residents in the parking lot after exiting Black’s car.

Had ComCor staff followed state standards and the company’s own policies, they would have monitored security cameras trained on the parking lot, searched Román Prieto for contraband, and conducted a head count every two hours, which includes a visual check of each resident.

“If that person had checked on Robert when they said that they would, if that would have been taken care of right away, he would still be alive,” said his mother.

Román Prieto’s overdose death was the third fatality involving substance use at the facility in the span of eight months, according to coroner reports obtained by ProPublica.

His family believes he was seeking the pain reliever oxycodone, which illicit fentanyl is often made to look like. The day before, he had strained his back moving bags of concrete at the family’s new restaurant, according to his family.

Joselymar Román shows a hat she had custom made to memorialize her brother Román Prieto, who often wore a Boston Red Sox snapback.

Mark Wester, the executive director of ComCor, said in a written statement that staff followed all protocols and that an investigation three months later by county employees found no deficiencies in the facility's response. Wester denied ProPublica’s request to review the county investigation. A public records request to El Paso County found no documentation of such an investigation.

State auditors in 2017 noted that the facility wasn’t following procedures, writing that the cameras were “unviewed,” that staff wasn’t verifying clients’ physical presence, and that “pat searches” to control contraband when entering the building did not meet state standards. Two years later, auditors reiterated the need for staff to confirm the presence of each client during head counts, particularly when “the client is sleeping or in the bathroom.” A plan was implemented in 2019 that addressed the auditors’ concerns, according to Wester.

For years, ComCor and many other halfway house operators in Colorado’s community corrections system have been cited by the state Office of Community Corrections for failing to comply with security standards, which can lead to dangerous consequences. Audits, staff incident reports and internal documents reviewed by ProPublica revealed that the facilities have been host to sexual assaults, frequent escapes, recurring drug use and overdose deaths.

Yet regulators rarely use their authority or financial leverage to force facilities to improve their safety practices.

The problems persist, in part, because although the Office of Community Corrections oversees the system, 22 local community corrections boards also regulate what happens inside individual facilities. ProPublica found that most of the local boards — which are staffed by elected officials, parole officers, law enforcement, prosecutors and judges — work in tandem with halfway house operators, often looking past violations and failing to follow up when audits identify problems. Many boards haven’t audited the facilities they oversee in five years, or ever, meaning operators make millions of dollars from state contracts with minimal oversight.

Two days after Román Prieto’s death, when the El Paso County community corrections administrator reported it to the state, the administrator didn’t mention that ComCor had failed to monitor its facility and residents and instead characterized the facility’s response as “very good,” according to an email obtained by ProPublica. Román Prieto had received three doses of Narcan, a drug used to reverse opioid overdoses, the administrator, Angel Medina, said.

A toxicology screen ordered by the El Paso County coroner and obtained by ProPublica found no naloxone, the medication in Narcan, in Román Prieto’s system.

ComCor Inc.’s halfway house in Colorado Springs

El Paso County referred ProPublica to ComCor for comment, saying the company is responsible for “all day-to-day operations.”

Medina, who left his position in April, declined an interview request and wouldn’t comment on the case, but said in a written statement that the board's first commitment is to public safety. “The staff and Community Corrections Board strive to ensure the providers work toward the highest standards set by the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice. This is accomplished by a genuine and sincere commitment to transparency and accountability,” he said in the statement.

The lack of oversight and accountability in Colorado’s halfway houses contributes to a system in which people who pass through the facilities — whether they’re transitioning out of prison or sentenced directly to community corrections by a judge — are more likely to end up incarcerated than rehabilitated. Of those who enroll in a Colorado halfway house, only 35% will successfully complete a program and stay out of the criminal justice system for at least two years, according to state data.

ProPublica reported earlier this year that overly punitive policies, a scarcity of employment training, a lack of effective drug treatment programs, financial costs that sink residents into debt, and a system void of transparency and oversight also contribute to the system’s failures.

“Of all of the stages in the criminal law system … I think this is probably one of the most opaque,” said Wendy Sawyer, research director for the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonpartisan criminal justice think tank based in Massachusetts. “There’s just a sort of [a] black hole.”

Inadequate Audits

Colorado’s halfway house system was established in 1974 to address prison overcrowding and provide addiction treatment, job training and other services to those leaving prison or avoiding incarceration through alternative sentencing programs. But the state has rarely evaluated whether it’s working.

It’s been more than 20 years since the halfway house system was independently audited. A 2001 review by the Office of the State Auditor, an independent agency within the Colorado legislative branch, found many problems, including “low levels of compliance” with state standards among halfway house operators and little enforcement of standards by state or local regulators. Out-of-compliance facilities still received contracts over and over, according to the assessment.

Auditors also found that it was impossible to determine how the 22 local community corrections boards, which contract with halfway house providers using state money, spend their administrative funds. “Few boards actually provide any type of systematic program oversight,” they wrote.

A photograph of Román Prieto and an urn containing his ashes, at right, are displayed on the mantel with other items memorializing him above two of his daughters, Naddia Román, 7, and Mariela Román, 8.

Steve Allen, who worked for 17 years as a legislative budget analyst, said he tried for years but failed to get more information about facilities from the state’s Office of Community Corrections. “I never had a clear picture” of how facilities were using state funding, he said. “I did the best I could, but things really never changed.”

The auditors recommended that the local boards should no longer be involved in routine administrative functions such as billing and administering contracts, and that reporting requirements be established.

In response, the state agreed to require “measurable performance expectations” in contracts. But 20 years passed before the metrics to do that were established, in 2021. Facilities now get additional funding if enough people graduate from a halfway house program and if recidivism rates are kept low enough, but they aren’t penalized if they don’t hit those marks.

In 2023, community corrections facilities will be eligible for even more state funding as part of a “pay-for-success” model that state regulators hope will improve the abysmally low success rates. Every three years, each facility will receive two new assessments: the PACE — which measures program quality, including whether rehabilitation programs are backed by research — and the CORE, which looks at facilities’ security practices.

These new audits, however, will evaluate fewer than half of the nearly 100 state standards for the facilities and rely on the same state and local oversight practices that have consistently failed to hold accountable poorly performing halfway house providers.

The OCC conducted the new assessments at every facility between 2017 and 2021, but it didn’t identify plans for improvement, something it says it will start doing next year.

Greg Fugate, director of communications and quality assurance for the Colorado Office of the State Auditor, said the state hasn’t conducted another independent audit of the system because the law doesn’t require it and the office hasn’t received a request to do so. But the governor or any lawmaker could request one, and the state auditor could initiate one at the office’s discretion.

The Office of Community Corrections is required to review facilities’ compliance with state standards every five years, but the law doesn’t specify how extensive the inspections need to be or what happens when problems are found. The office also conducts some audits for specific treatment programs and monitors certain standards through its billing system, including background checks and fingerprinting requirements for new hires, according to Katie Ruske, manager of Colorado’s Office of Community Corrections, which is part of the Division of Criminal Justice. In 2017, the office conducted 11 “limited scope” audits that evaluated state standards beyond what’s covered in the PACE and CORE reviews, focusing only on security practices. None have been done since.

ProPublica obtained audits conducted by the OCC since 2017 through public records requests. They show many facilities frequently do not comply with state standards for security and program quality, and the homes rarely face serious consequences for those failures.

A 2017 Office of Community Corrections audit of ComCor found that security was “inadequate to effectively monitor the facility, client movement and general activities.” (OCC audit obtained and annotated by ProPublica) The audit describes inadequate head-count practices to verify residents’ presence in the halfway house. (OCC audit obtained and annotated by ProPublica) “Significant issues” were found with pat searches, “leading to insufficient contraband control.” (OCC audit obtained and annotated by ProPublica)

Some facilities lacked documentation for disciplinary actions and resident escapes, and sometimes didn’t report sexual assault allegations. Facilities failed to adequately train staff, monitor clients and prevent drugs from entering the halfway house, auditors wrote.

Where state auditing falls short, local community corrections boards are supposed to fill the gaps, according to Ruske. “They need to do their own auditing so that there is more time inside of those programs and facilities, more oversight than just what our office can provide,” said Ruske.

“The statutes and our contracts still make it very clear that we can hold subcontractors accountable if we need to,” she said. “And we have done that in our history … to the point of program closure. That hasn't been during my tenure, but that has happened in the past.”

In 2016, Colorado lawmakers provided additional funding to improve employee training, retention and recruitment at halfway houses — $134,000 for smaller facilities and $269,000 for larger facilities. But they are not required to report how that money is used and the state doesn’t audit whether it goes to the intended purpose.

Christopher Bonham, who worked in security at ComCor, said he received two days of training when he was hired in 2016. It didn’t prepare him for dealing with residents who struggled with substance abuse, he said.

Bonham said more staffing and better training might have prevented an overdose death he witnessed in 2016. It was the night shift, and he had been dealing with an “onslaught of guys needing pat-downs, Breathalyzers, everything.” A few hours had passed since he last patrolled the facility, he said.

“When you’ve got 120, 130 guys walking around and there’s only two of you on shift, it’s like a human tsunami,” said Bonham, who worked for the organization on and off for five years. “That’s what it’s like at a lot of these places. They try to go with the absolute minimum staffing.”

A minimum of two staff members work the night shift in each security office, according to Wester, ComCor’s executive director. The company has two facilities with a total of three security offices.

The other staff member on duty yelled for Bonham to go to Room 7, he said, where a 26-year-old resident enrolled in the treatment program for serious addictions was unconscious. Bonham and his colleague tried to resuscitate the man before paramedics arrived, Bonham said. The next day, Bonham said, the hospital told him the man had been taken off life support. A coroner’s report indicates he died of an overdose of methamphetamine and heroin.

Christopher Bonham, who worked security at ComCor, at a park in Colorado Springs

Bonham and others brought concerns about staffing levels and training to management many times, he said. The response was always the same: They’d look into it. The facility began stocking Narcan, he said. But little else changed.

After two more overdose deaths and more pleas to upper management to improve training and staffing that went unheeded, according to Bonham, he left the organization in November 2021. Román Prieto’s overdose death occurred a month later.

Wester said in response to a 2021 state audit that the facility has been “redeveloping” its new employee orientation to include a week of classroom training and time shadowing more-experienced employees.

But he acknowledged to ProPublica there have been times when that wasn’t the case. “A year ago, we were down 25 staff,” he said in June. “So we were trying to do rapid hiring and so for a time, we did shorten the orientation. It wasn’t the best circumstance.”

Preparing to Be Audited

Some who’ve worked in the system say auditing doesn’t provide a true reflection of what happens inside the facilities.

When auditors arrived at ComCor Inc. in July 2021 to conduct a PACE audit of its rehabilitation programs, Broderick Rimes, a security manager, felt like a student who had all the answers to the exam he was about to take. The auditors from Colorado’s Office of Community Corrections had provided an outline of what to expect and given the facility two months to prepare.

Rimes, a former investigator for the military, said his bosses gave him funds to “beautify” the rundown motel-turned-correctional-facility. He instructed residents to plant flowers and build new outdoor staff seating, and he rewarded their free labor with a barbecue. He had new fans installed, which hushed residents’ complaints about the heat.

Weeks earlier, the facility had been understaffed, according to Rimes.

Audits in 2017 and 2019 noted an “alarming rate of employee turnover,” along with other staff-related problems, such as disciplinary practices that did not follow fairness and due process requirements and a failure to control contraband entering the facility.

The day of the 2021 audit, Rimes’ “best and brightest” staffers were working. Many had received pay increases so they’d have “happy faces” for the visitors, according to Rimes.

Under the direction of his supervisors, Rimes had recruited residents to join a new “mentorship program,” which would be showcased during the audit. Those who agreed to participate received perks: bigger rooms, air conditioners, extra attention from staff and the promise of new gym equipment. This ensured the clients had positive things to say about the program, Rimes said.

Auditors gave ComCor one of the highest scores in the state.

According to Wester, the facility received similarly high marks from local regulators, including Medina, the El Paso County community corrections administrator.

“Mr. Medina was able to only see what we allowed him to see,” Rimes said.

Broderick Rimes, a former security manager at ComCor, at his home

Rimes said he felt like he was deceiving the auditors, but believed that the potential boost in state funding from a good audit would improve conditions at the facility.

But as soon as the auditors left, things went back to the way they were before, he said.

Upper management halted the mentorship program, saying it was never formally approved. The mentors were moved out of their improved rooms. The AC units and fans were returned on the grounds that they were “violating fire code.” Rimes said he was scolded for letting residents perform maintenance tasks such as installing fans and outdoor seating without being paid.

Rimes said it was clear that he’d been manipulated too.

He had to tell residents that they weren’t getting the promised gym equipment.

“I couldn’t look those clients in the face,” said Rimes. “What am I going to tell them? That we lied to them?”

ComCor’s Wester told ProPublica that the facility had ample time to prepare for the audit because it had been delayed due to the pandemic. The audit was originally scheduled for March 2020.

He also stressed that the purpose was not to catch facilities by surprise. The requirements “are not a secret,” said Wester, who is also the chairperson of the Colorado Community Corrections Coalition, a trade group that lobbies on behalf of halfway house operators. “We are always improving our environment, our management and our services.”

Wester called Rimes’ mentorship program “fledgling” and said it was replaced by a more robust one. The pay increases staff received were not related to the state evaluation, he said. Wester said he was aware of the other changes Rimes made but they weren’t done for the audit and were instead part of a broader effort to improve the facility.

A month later, Rimes resigned.

“It sucks because I live in this community, so it’s not like I don’t see these clients,” he said in June. “I know the bad stuff that I participated in.”

Local Boards Rarely Step In

Colorado’s halfway house system was designed like many other state programs — giving local governments as much control as possible. That led to the creation of community corrections boards in each of Colorado’s 22 judicial districts. The boards operate independently, and state statutes are silent on who can sit on those boards and for how long.

The boards are directed to ensure that facilities are complying with state standards, but many have never audited the facilities they oversee. Twelve boards are required by the OCC to conduct their own audits, according to their annual reports, but only six have consistently done so since 2017, according to audits obtained by ProPublica.

The boards vary drastically in their makeup, protocols and oversight.

They distribute state money and have the authority to accept or deny people’s enrollment in halfway house programs, essentially operating as an unofficial court overwhelmingly staffed by law enforcement and other members of the criminal justice system.

Across the road from the ComCor halfway house. State standards and the company’s own policies call for security cameras trained on the parking lot to be monitored.

Allen, the former legislative budget analyst, attended a handful of their meetings. He recalled a man who took a plea deal from a district attorney so he could go to community corrections instead of prison. The board denied the man’s application.

“Who voted against it? The representative from the DA’s office,” he said. “I’m sorry, there is something wrong with that system.”

Advocates say transparency is necessary because boards could cherry-pick applicants who would improve their facility’s success rate, a metric now used to financially reward facilities.

A 2018 law requires each board to use an evidence-based decision-making tool to avoid discrimination in such decisions. But boards are allowed to design their own tools without state input. Some refuse people who receive alternative sentences for violent crimes, people from other judicial districts who have been convicted of a sex crime, and people who have been arrested for selling drugs.

Despite funding these boards, the Office of Community Corrections gathers little information about their activities apart from an annual report, leaving state lawmakers who approve their funding in the dark about halfway houses’ operations. Facilities are required to report how many people escape each year –– there have been 936 so far this year, according to state data –– and how much rent each facility collects from residents. During the 2020 fiscal year, facilities collected approximately $15 million in rent, according to the Office of Community Corrections’ annual report.

The community board for Alamosa County does not publish information online about when or where it meets or who its board members are. Colorado’s open meetings law requires that meeting notices be posted “in a formally designated public place at least 24 hours before a meeting.”

“We don’t post our information because there’s some privacy issues. We never have,” said Patrick Stanford, who has been the community corrections coordinator for Alamosa County for more than 20 years.

Through public records requests, ProPublica obtained information on the board’s membership, which consists of four current and former district and county judges; one court executive; two parole and probation officers; a public defender; the district attorney; a sheriff; a police chief; two former or current county commissioners; the mayor; and a local mental health provider.

In response to a follow-up question from ProPublica, Stanford said that he has sent the meeting information to be posted in the Alamosa County Courthouse but he could not verify that it was posted.

Steve Zansberg, a Denver-based lawyer and president of the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition, said that while posting in the courthouse would technically be in compliance with the law, “it is certainly not in compliance with its spirit.”

The local board for Alamosa or the county government has not conducted its own audit of the halfway house it oversees since at least 2017, despite being directed to do so by the OCC, according to public records.

A 2019 state audit of Advantage Treatment Center in Alamosa detailed practices that did not comply with state law, according to the report, including how often residents were monitored when they left the facility, processes for substance use testing, how client medications were handled, how escapes were documented and the levels of staffing that were maintained.

The report found that the facility was in full compliance with only two state standards. But neither the state, the local board nor the facility operator required corrective action, according to Stanford.

Joshua Mayhugh, the vice president for Advantage Treatment Centers, said in a written statement that steps were taken internally to correct the noncompliance, including “technical training,” but did not provide details.

It wasn’t the first time the state had taken issue with Alamosa County’s halfway house. The previous operator, San Luis Valley Behavioral Health Group, is among the few to ever have a contract canceled by the state for egregious violations of state standards, including falsifying documents and failing to hire qualified treatment staff, according to Ruske and public records. Less than a year later, the provider decided to close the facility, according to Kylee Sowards, San Luis Valley’s marketing and communications specialist. She said in an email that no one employed at the time of the closure currently works for the company.

Following the 2019 audit, Stanford said he met with the local board and the facility to discuss the audit, but he couldn’t point to anything that had been done to address the concerns beyond installing more security cameras. There has not been a follow-up audit.

“We have a pretty good track record, and I’m not just saying that. I think if you look around the state, Advantage Treatment Center has a good track record,” he said. “Not perfect, no one’s perfect.”

“I think most of the board members … feel pretty good about how things are going,” Stanford added.

“If They Had Searched Him, He’d Be Alive Today”

Román shows a necklace charm given to her by her brother Román Prieto. “He wanted to be better, and they took away that opportunity,” she said.

Román Prieto’s family was never notified of his death by ComCor.

Black learned of her fiancé’s death from his roommate, who called her that Christmas morning. She then called Román Prieto’s sister, who was wrapping presents when the phone rang.

“He was so full of life,” Naddia Román said. “He was doing really, really good. He was more around his kids, more around his family. He wanted to be better, and they took away that opportunity.”

Román Prieto’s stepfather, Ivan Rios, emailed the facility in late December asking for more information and security footage. He never got a response.

“If they had searched him, he’d be alive today,” Rios said. “He was a victim of ComCor.”

Correction

Dec. 9, 2022: This story originally gave incorrect details about the number and timing of certain halfway house audits. Eleven limited-scope audits were conducted, not eight, and the audits were conducted in 2017, not since 2017.

Louisa Terrell, before becoming Biden’s director of legislative affairs, spent two years at Facebook at a key time.

by Moe Clark, photography by Eli Imadali

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

Soon after Shannon Lucas began serving a sentence at a Colorado halfway house, her medication began to disappear.

Lucas had been sentenced to eight years in community corrections in lieu of prison for her role in a 2018 burglary involving her ex-boyfriend. At 41, she had never been in trouble with the law before.

“I did believe that I was in a place that was for justice,” she said of her first weeks at the Larimer County Community Corrections facility in Fort Collins in October 2018. “I really thought going in there that I was going to be protected.”

That would change less than a month later when she reported the theft of her prescription medications, which treat her post-traumatic stress disorder and severe anxiety. Instead of help, she got a lesson in how little recourse residents of these facilities have to address wrongdoing in the system.

Lucas filed a complaint with management, which, instead of investigating, wrote her up for “medication misconduct.”

Her lawyer requested security footage from the facility that might show who’d taken the pills. A judge ordered that it be given to the attorney on the condition that it not be released to anyone else.

Lucas filed a complaint when her prescription medication for post-traumatic stress disorder and severe anxiety went missing.

Tim Hand, the facility’s director, and Emily Humphrey, director of Larimer County’s criminal justice department, did not respond to requests for comment.

Halfway houses hold residents’ medications and provide doses under supervision. And the Larimer County Community Corrections facility had a documented problem with tracking medications, according to state records.

A 2016 audit found that 1 in 4 of the medication counts that auditors reviewed were inaccurate and that staff were not “consistently following policy and procedures” to address inaccuracies. Auditors said corrective action was needed. A 2019 audit found that the facility did not have procedures for disposing of medications. State auditors have not reviewed the facility’s medication practices since.

When residents of Colorado’s halfway houses believe they are victims of wrongdoing, they are often left with few options for restitution in a system that lacks a streamlined, independent complaint process and does little to allay their fears of retaliation.

Each facility is required to have a grievance policy, but dozens of residents from multiple halfway houses told ProPublica that they didn’t use it because they feared staff would retaliate. Even residents who’d graduated from a program said they were reluctant to criticize their old facility because their parole officer could send them back there. A person can be expelled from a program for “any reason or for no reason at all,” a 2012 law says. People who get expelled are typically incarcerated or resentenced.

A 2017 audit of a different Colorado facility, ComCor, found that formal complaints were not “consistently maintained, reviewed or responded to.” Clients said they believed complaints “simply wound up in the trash,” auditors wrote.

Mark Wester, the executive director of ComCor, said that the facility allows “clients to work in the community, be productive citizens, receive client centered treatment, while having accountability and supervision that improves community safety.” Wester did not respond to a request for comment about the handling of complaints.

Lucas sits with her daughter Ava LeVan, left, doodling at their home in Fort Collins. “I was so scared I wasn’t going to be able to see my daughters” if the Larimer County facility sent her to prison because of her complaints, Lucas said.

The state has the power to investigate residents’ complaints but it rarely does, according to Katie Ruske, manager of the state’s Office of Community Corrections. Complaints submitted to the state are forwarded to one of the local community corrections boards, which ProPublica found often look past violations or fail to follow up to see if problems are addressed.

Ruske, who has held her job since 2018, could recall only one such investigation, which involved an alleged violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Starting in 2023, the state will review client complaints as part of its audits.

At the Larimer County Community Corrections facility, Lucas noticed in late October 2018 that more pills had disappeared. Lucas asked the staff member on duty to count them: 24 pills were missing.

In a panic, Lucas submitted a second complaint to staff and called 911. Lucas said she needed documentation to replace the medication before she went into withdrawal. “I can have seizures, I can die if I don’t take my medication,” Lucas said.

LeVan brushes Lucas’ hair at their home.

A Larimer County Sheriff’s Office incident report indicates that Lucas spoke to Officer Aaron Hawks, who suspected she was taking more than the prescribed amount of her medication. (An internal affairs investigation would later find that the officer violated policies, including failing to maintain an “impartial attitude” toward Lucas by calling her “a felon” and referring to community corrections staff as “vetted.” The report states he did not gather the evidence that would be necessary to conclude Lucas was at fault.) The Larimer County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.

The facility responded by issuing Lucas a Class 1 violation — the most serious — for submitting a “false” police report. Such violations can result in termination from a program, according to the facility’s guidebook.

“If I am revoked from this program, I am going immediately to prison” for eight years, Lucas said. “I was so scared I wasn’t going to be able to see my daughters.”

Lucas appealed to management, who quickly denied her complaint. She wrote another appeal and met with the facility’s assistant director, who told her that she too believed Lucas was responsible for the missing medication, Lucas said. Lucas was then required to attend an administrative hearing with management to determine if she would be terminated from the program. Her request to have a lawyer present was denied.

She was ultimately allowed to remain in the program, but her sentence was extended by a month, according to court documents.

Lucas laughs with her daughter Olivia Lucas, left, and LeVan as they eat. She is completing her sentence at home after graduating from the halfway house’s residential program.

Under the direction of her doctor, she began receiving weekly prescriptions instead of monthly so she could keep a closer eye on her medication. But pills continued to disappear.

In March 2019, she gave her new prescription to a staff member, Lauren Hand. Lucas recalls the correctional services specialist telling her, “Shannon, there’s two pills missing but I’m not gonna say anything.”

A month after Lucas left the facility in April 2019, Lauren Hand was charged with two misdemeanors and a petty offense for unlawful possession of a controlled substance, official misconduct and theft. She resigned shortly after, according to an incident report.

By then, Lucas had graduated from the residential program and moved home to complete her sentence with frequent check-ins at the facility.

Lauren Hand, who is the daughter of the facility’s director, Tim Hand, did not respond to requests for comment.

The outcome of the charges against Lauren Hand is unclear because the documentation is not public. According to Raymond Daniel, records manager for the district attorney’s office in the 8th Judicial District, the case would still appear in public records even if the charges were dropped. However, if the case was sealed or expunged, the public would not be able to view the records, he said in an email.

Hand worked at another halfway house in Boulder before accepting a position at a youth detention center operated by the state’s Division of Youth Services in October 2021, according to her LinkedIn profile. As of January 2022, she no longer worked there, according to a spokesperson for the agency.

Lucas filed a lawsuit over her stolen medication against Lauren Hand and other staff members at the Larimer County Community Corrections facility, as well as the board of county commissioners and the local community corrections board. Lucas alleged that staff at the facility retaliated against her for reporting the missing medication to police.

The judge dismissed the case in July 2022, saying, among other things, that Lucas’ allegations were overly broad. Lucas has filed an appeal.

Though Lucas is back at home with her daughters, she is required to report to the facility for drug tests, sometimes multiple times a week, and for meetings with her case manager. She said it’s a struggle to enter the facility without having a panic attack.

Employees at the halfway house emphasize the importance of taking responsibility for one’s actions, she said, but staff aren’t always held to that standard.

“They still say that I was stealing my medication,” Lucas said. “They literally could have just done the right thing. They could have just listened to me.”

Lucas at home. She says her pets have helped her cope since returning.

Sallyann Tate of Harrisburg, IL joined the Real Rock Army today

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“These individuals have not lived long enough to actually know what life is,” Ward 3 Alderman Brandon Bosley said.

Two women and one man died over the weekend in a crash along northbound Interstate 55 in Scott County.

A 26-year-old man was killed and another man was injured when they got into a gunfight at around 2 a.m. Sunday morning.