The Department of Justice Civil Rights Division has announced a special investigation into conditions inside Colorado Department of Corrections (CDOC) and Colorado Department of Youth Services (DYS) facilities—the first of these undertaken since President Donald Trump took office in January. It comes amid reports of excessive restraint and solitary confinement in DYS facilities; systemic starvation of youth sentenced as adults; the Trump administration’s persecution of trans women in prison; and the administration’s interest in Tina Peters, the only person currently serving prison time as a result of helping Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
In a letter to Colorado Governor Jared Polis (D) dated December 8, DOJ Civil Rights Division Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon wrote that the investigation will look for “pattern or practice” rights violations. Specifically, whether people in custody have access to adequate medical care and “safe and sanitary” housing, and whether youth in DYS facilities are provided “adequate nutrition” and protection from excessive force.
Lastly, DOJ “will also consider whether Colorado violates prisoners’ and detainees’ right to free exercise of religion by housing biological males in units designated for females.”
Since Trump took office in January, the DOJ has commenced only one new special investigation of law enforcement or corrections departments. That began in March, and focuses on whether the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is violating the “Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens, including by requiring them to endure lengthy wait times when applying for concealed handgun licenses.”
In 2024, the department launched three “pattern or practice” investigations involving a prison system—California Women’s Prisons, Trousdale Turner Correctional Center in Tennessee and Kentucky Department of Juvenile Justice.
Prisons overwhelmingly house people according to their sex assigned at birth, even contradicting their own policies that support using gender identity instead.
In 2024, following a class action lawsuit brought by trans women whom CDOC had housed in men’s prisons, a groundbreaking consent decree required the department to open an “Integration Unit” at a women’s facility, and a “Voluntary Transgender Unit” at a men’s facility. The former serves as short-term housing for trans women entering the system, and the latter allows them to be housed together if they choose.
Trump and various members of his administration have been openly linking the DOJ announcement to their support of Tina Peters, the former clerk of Mesa County, Colorado, who facilitated unauthorized access to voting machines and data in the wake of the 2020 presidential election.
In October 2024 Peters was convicted of multiple felonies and sentenced to a total of about nine years, making her the first and so far only person to serve prison time as a result of Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election results. None of her convictions are federal, so Trump doesn’t have the authority to commute her sentence; Gov. Polis has declined to do so. Earlier in 2025, Peters filed a request to be released from prison while her appeal is pending. It was dismissed by a federal judge on December 8, the same day the DOJ announced its investigation.
Peters is currently incarcerated at La Vista Correctional Facility, which is one of the facilities named in Dhillon’s December 8 letter and which happens to have the same warden as Youthful Offender Center (YOS)—which is also at the center of the investigation. YOS is not a DYS facility. It’s a medium-security prison for youth between ages 14 and 19 whose convictions are considered violent, and who have been sentenced as adults.
YOS has been in the news due to increasingly dire complaints about its policies around food. Portions and caloric intake requirements have shrunk, and food packages as well as canteen purchases are only authorized for those who’ve reached the least-restrictive level of custody.
In November, one person housed at YOS was hospitalized for malnutrition and told by doctors that he needed to double his food intake; upon returning to YOS he was not given more food than before. Shortly after, he went into renal failure and had to be flown to a Denver hospital; he’d lost 42 lbs in six weeks.
YOS has since enacted a policy change allowing everyone in custody to purchase food from the canteen, but by one estimate about 40 percent of the population can’t afford to do so.
Recent reports by the Child Protection Ombudsman of Colorado and the nonprofit Disability Law Colorado described DYS, meanwhile, as subjecting the youth in its custody to “strip searches,” “physical force,” “excessive restraint” and “seclusion.” One facility was shut down in September due to “basic safety” failures. It appears to be quietly reopening.
Photograph of Platte Valley Youth Services Center via Colorado Department of Human Services