Larimer County gets $84,700 grant for one-year peer support pilot

Larimer County's Community Justice Alternatives has received an $84,700 grant for a one-year pilot that would add a peer support specialist with lived experience to guide people entering its programs, director Emily Humphrey told commissioners at a Nov. 4 work session.

The specialist would be a male employee with lived experience who serves as a guide for people entering the department's programs, Humphrey said. The caseload would be high-risk, about 20 people, she said.

The money comes through the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant. The award period runs April 1, 2027, through March 31, 2028.

Humphrey said the position is a one-year pilot, and the grant won't cover a full-time job. "This will not pay for a complete full-time person, but I think we have some vacancy savings that we can move around," Humphrey said. She named potential Medicaid billing for some services and state correctional treatment funds as other ways to sustain it.

House Bill 26-1009, the Colorado Mandatory Lethality Assessment Act, will require law enforcement officers to conduct a validated, evidence-based lethality assessment when they respond to a domestic violence call by July 1, 2027.

A representative of Community Justice Alternatives said the bill requires officers to administer an assessment but does not specify what they must do with the results. Larimer County intends to share the information with the district attorney, public defender and court for bond-setting decisions, the representative said.

The same representative said there is no money attached to the bill as far as the representative knows. "I don't believe there is a fiscal note attached to that," the representative said, adding that questions are likely to come next year about who will administer the assessments and who is taking the time.

The department's presentation listed third-quarter 2026 failure-to-appear rates of 3.5% for supervised pretrial defendants and 17% for defendants who were not supervised. Pretrial team lead Justin Grott said, "we do ongoing case management to help ensure defendants' compliance with bond conditions and court attendance." The presentation listed 13 pretrial case managers, 3,821 defendants supervised and 5,750 cases in 2025, with current averages of 120 defendants and 149 cases per case manager.

On the day of the work session, the department was supervising 3,860 people, a representative said. That included 3,262 in Alternative Sentencing and 598 in Community Corrections. The representative said the department had 61 case managers, 20 in Alternative Sentencing and 41 in Community Corrections.

Useful Public Service, also called community service, delivered 67,237.36 hours of volunteer work from January 2026 through September 2026, according to the presentation. It estimated the work saved more than $1,000,000 for tax-supported and nonprofit agencies in Larimer County, using hourly minimum wage as the basis. In that period the program had three case managers, two locations in Fort Collins and Loveland, and 1,498 current participants.

Work Release, in which people serve jail sentences in a residential facility with managed access to employment, reported high completion rates from January 2026 through September 2026. The general population had 566 successful closures and 52 unsuccessful closures among 618 clients, a reported 91.5% success rate. The specialty-court population had 143 successful and 72 unsuccessful closures among 215 clients, a reported 66% success rate, which the presentation described as above a national average of between 50% and 60%.

Competency case management works with the 8th Judicial Competency Docket and can use up to 10 Alternative Sentencing Department beds funded by the Competency Fine's Committee. A Community Justice Alternatives representative said participants in those beds may be placed in Work Release before a plea or finding of guilt while their competency is being determined, rather than remaining in a traditional jail bed.

A competency case specialist told commissioners the statewide wait for inpatient restoration is long. "The waitlist for the state hospital is hundreds throughout the state," the specialist said, adding that bed availability is limited at Fort Logan State Hospital and Pueblo State Hospital.

Larimer County is also partnering with Colorado State University on a three-year grant worth just shy of $200,000 each year, a Community Justice Alternatives representative said. The main focus is Community Corrections residential clients, and Work Release clients who want to take part are invited, the representative said.