El Paso County, Colorado

Gateways: Through the Rockies Program

Since 1996 the EPSO Gateways Program, a non-taxpayer self-supported program, has provided effective educational and therapeutic programming and re-entry support with the goal of having a positive personal impact on criminal offenders, significantly reducing crime in El Paso and its surrounding counties, and saving its taxpayers money that would have been spent on policing and re-incarceration.

During Phase I of the Gateways Program, the adult participants attend 88 hours of didactic psycho-educational classroom offerings. The classroom curriculum includes a cognitive-behavioral approach to domestic abuse, anger management, substance abuse recovery and relapse prevention, parenting and relationship skills, job-seeking and employment skills, and post-release short-term and long-term life goals.

Since 2003, Dr. Patty Hirsch and the other certified instructors from Lifeline Education and Counseling, LLC, have provided an annual average of 1790 hours of classroom. The Gateways treatment service provider utilizes the five critical components of effective treatment, as indicated by the National Institute of Drug Abuse: (1) assessment; (2) patient-treatment matching; (3) comprehensive services; (4) relapse prevention; and (5) accountability.

Since the inception of the Gateways Program in 1996 the percentage of participant re-offenders has remained below 40%. In light of a published article by the Bureau of Justice Statistics of a fifteen-State study indicating that 67.5% of released inmates are rearrested within three years, this indicates a successful annual reduction of nearly 28% in recidivism rates for Gateways Program participants for nearly ten years.

Inmates successfully completing Phase I of the Program move to Phase II, and are eligible for employment at supervised sites off the grounds of the Criminal Justice Center with one of the Gateways community partners of public agency and private sector businesses. In 2006, the Gateways participants worked 67,004 hours at the various sites.

The total 2006 revenues generated from the work efforts of the Gateways participants and their sixteen business partners was $668,955.03. In addition to totally supporting all of the financial needs of the Gateways Program including all of the program and clinical staff salaries and truckloads of supplies, the participants earned $153.237.07 in wages, paid $15,323.70 in FICA taxes, and $25,863.40 to the Fourth Judicial District Victim Compensation Fund for fines, court costs, and/or donations to victims. Over the years, the labors of the Gateways participants have resulted in a total contribution of $196,279.81 to the Victim Compensation Fund. The net earnings are posted to the inmates’ jail accounts, and have averaged approximately $1000.00 for each 90-day period of program participation. 

The Gateways participants also performed 1,582 hours of community service work in 2006, which included the collection of 380 garbage bags of trash along 58 miles of roadways in El Paso County, and assisted with the EPSO Law Enforcement community clean-up project in the Stratmoor Valley Area. Since the inception of the Gateways Program in 1996, the participants have averaged 2752.5 annual hours of community service.