You are not allowed to talk about that, Bob

Former Congressman Bob Beauprez wants to be Colorado's next governor. Yesterday he spoke out against Democrat Governor Hickenlooper's policy of releasing criminals directly out of solitary confinement back into society.

“You’ll all remember the name Evan Ebel,” Beauprez continued. “If you don’t remember Evan Ebel, you certainly remember Tom Clements. Tom Clements was our director of Corrections in Colorado. Evan Ebel was paroled directly from — they call it ‘administrative segregation’ — directly from solitary confinement onto our streets, and within a matter of hours, he killed a pizza driver, guy working a second job to try to keep his family whole. Killed him for his uniform, his pizza delivery uniform. Then about 48 hours later, he knocked on Tom Clements’ door and killed him.”

Shaking his head, Beauprez said: “If Evan Ebel were the only one state Corrections released from solitary right onto our streets, that’d be bad enough. But he wasn’t. In the course of a year, over a hundred parolees from State Corrections were released directly from solitary confinement onto our streets — your neighborhood, maybe right across the street. Think about it. Solitary confinement. How do you get in solitary confinement? You don’t play well with others, right? Directly from solitary onto our streets.

Ernest Luning writes:

In an ironic twist, Clements, who headed the state’s prison system for two years before his murder, had made it his mission to reduce the number of prisoners released on parole directly from solitary confinement and boasted shortly before his death that Corrections had cut the share roughly in half. His successor, Rick Raemisch, spent more than 20 hours in solitary confinement and wrote about its damaging effects in a New York Times Op-Ed article earlier this year. According to DOC statistics, the number of prisoners held in solitary confinement in the state has declined from a high of about 1,500 to fewer than 600 earlier this year.

Hickenlooper's spokesman said Beauprez shouldn't be allowed to talk about such things:

“Tom Clements’ death was a tragedy and should not be used for political gain,” Hickenlooper campaign spokesperson Eddie Stern told The Colorado Statesman.

Read more here.