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Research Question

How do state legislatures shape criminal justice policy outcomes, and what institutional factors influence reform?

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Current Considerations

Spend enough time around a state capitol and one lesson becomes obvious: the biggest criminal justice battles are not always the loudest ones. Headlines usually focus on whether lawmakers are being “tough” or “soft” on crime. Still, many of the most consequential choices happen in appropriations bills, oversight hearings, sunset reviews, and reporting requirements. This matters because most crimes fall under state jurisdiction, and state legislatures are the institutions that define crimes, set procedures, allocate money, and oversee many of the agencies that serve victims and investigate offenders. National research on criminal justice reform makes a similar point. Better data can change how lawmakers make decisions, stronger legislatures can induce greater transparency from agencies, and better-resourced legislatures are more capable of tailoring reforms to their own states rather than copying policy language wholesale (NCSL 2026; NCSL/Justice Counts 2022; Cook et al. 2023; Jansa, Hansen, and Gray 2018).

Colorado offers a particularly revealing case study because its recent public safety debates have centered not only on punishment, but also on investigative capacity. After the 2023 discovery that a former Colorado Bureau of Investigation scientist had allegedly manipulated data in roughly 10,800 DNA cases, the state faced a major credibility and capacity problem. According to CBI, the sexual assault kit backlog was about 1,400 cases by February 2025 and turnaround times exceeded 500 days. The State Auditor later reported that in 2024, approximately half of CBI’s DNA analysts’ lab time was spent reviewing the former scientist’s cases, diverting staff from active testing. What began as a forensic crisis quickly became a legislative question: Who would fund the fix, how would the public know whether the fix was working, and what standards should govern the system going forward (Colorado Bureau of Investigation 2025; Colorado Office of the State Auditor 2026).

The first answer came through the budget law. Senate Bill 25-170 required CBI to spend $3 million in specifically appropriated money on backlogged DNA evidence, sexual assault kit tests, and DNA retesting tied to the misconduct review. The law also authorized the use of external laboratories, required a public dashboard with updates at least every 30 days, and mandated monthly reports to the General Assembly through June 2026. Just as important, this was not framed as a purely partisan measure. The bill’s prime sponsors included Democratic Senator Judy Amabile and Republican Senator Barbara Kirkmeyer, and the bill passed the Senate 33-0 and the House 60-0. In other words, Colorado lawmakers treated backlogged evidence as an institutional failure that required both money and measurable accountability, not just campaign rhetoric (Colorado General Assembly 2025a; Legislative Council Staff 2025).

That legislative response shows why budgets are themselves a form of criminal justice policy. A state legislature does not need to rewrite the criminal code to change case outcomes. It can decide whether evidence is outsourced, whether staffing data are public, whether turnaround times are visible to survivors and detectives, and whether agency promises are tied to statutory reporting. In Colorado’s case, those choices appear to have mattered. The State Auditor found that by December 2025, the sexual assault DNA backlog had fallen from 1,462 cases to 629, while the total DNA backlog fell from 2,448 cases to 1,459. The projected date for reaching a 90-day turnaround time for sexual assault cases moved from April 2027 to September 2026. Progress was incomplete, since the average turnaround time for sexual assault cases was still 190 days as of January 2026, but the direction of change was unmistakable (Colorado Office of the State Auditor 2026; Colorado Bureau of Investigation 2026a).

The second answer came through institutional redesign. Senate Bill 25-304 did not simply add more money to the system. It changed the structure of oversight and victim communication. The act created the Colorado Sexual Assault Forensic Medical Evidence Review Board in the Department of Law, with the attorney general as chair and at least 15 members drawn from relevant agencies and stakeholders. It also required law enforcement agencies to notify victims every 90 days when forensic medical evidence DNA analysis had not yet been received, expanded public reporting requirements, and set a new expectation that accredited crime laboratories should endeavor to analyze forensic medical evidence within 60 days. The bill also appropriated General Fund money to the Department of Law to implement the new structure. This is legislating in a different mode. Rather than focusing on punishment after conviction, it focuses on the chain of response before a case ever reaches trial (Colorado General Assembly 2025b; Legislative Council Staff 2025; Colorado Office of the State Auditor 2026).

The 60-day benchmark in SB25-304 is especially important because it illustrates how legislatures can reset agency priorities through statute. The State Auditor notes that since 2013, Colorado’s benchmark for sexual assault kit testing had effectively been six months, subject to laboratory resources. SB25-304 sharply reduced that timeline to 60 days, while also requiring expanded average turnaround-time reporting. On paper, that is a simple statutory amendment. In practice, it changes how agencies are judged, what backlogs count as politically tolerable, and what victims can reasonably expect from the state. This aligns with national work on data-driven criminal justice reform, which argues that legislatures shape policy most effectively when they can require timely, comparable performance data rather than relying on anecdote or panic (Colorado Office of the State Auditor 2026; NCSL/Justice Counts 2022).

Colorado’s Cold Case Task Force shows a third way legislatures shape public safety policy: preserving institutions long enough for expertise and coordination to accumulate. According to CBI, legislation in 2007 created the Cold Case Team, the Cold Case Task Force, and the Cold Case Database. CBI also reports that funding received in 2022 allowed it to establish a full-time Cold Case Team with four agents, two analysts, a forensic investigative genetic genealogy analyst, a supervisor, and embedded forensic scientists. The unit’s database covers unresolved homicide cases, long-term missing persons, and unidentified remains cases dating back to 1970. This is easy to overlook in broader debates about crime, but cold case work depends on continuity, information-sharing, and specialized personnel, all of which are created through state policy choices rather than local improvisation alone (Colorado Bureau of Investigation 2026b).

The legislature has repeatedly protected that continuity. Senate Bill 19-163 continued the Cold Case Task Force until 2026, and it did so with overwhelming support, passing the Senate 32-0 and the House 62-1. The bill’s fiscal materials described a task force that meets at least four times each year and brings together representatives from public safety, the Department of Law, sheriffs, police, district attorneys, victim advocates, victims’ families, and forensic pathology. More recently, the Department of Regulatory Agencies’ 2025 sunset review recommended continuing the task force because it provides subject matter expertise to CBI and local law enforcement agencies across the state. This is a classic example of how legislatures do more than create programs. Through the sunset process, they periodically decide which institutions remain worthy of state support and which ones disappear (Colorado General Assembly 2019; Legislative Council Staff 2019; DORA 2025).

Taken together, Colorado’s recent reforms suggest that state-level criminal justice policy is shaped by at least four institutional factors. First, crises create openings. The DNA backlog became politically actionable once the scale of the problem and the operational consequences were visible. Second, legislatures need usable information. Dashboards, mandated reports, and audit findings converted a vague failure into quantifiable metrics. Third, reform is more durable when it is interagency rather than symbolic. Colorado’s review board and task force deliberately knit together investigators, prosecutors, victim advocates, and executive agencies. Fourth, legislative capacity matters. Research on state politics finds that stronger legislatures can induce greater transparency from agencies, and that legislatures with more resources are better able to adapt policy ideas to their own needs. Colorado’s response fits that pattern because lawmakers did not just copy a national talking point about public safety. They converted a budget footnote, a testing crisis, and a sunset review into state-specific institutions and reporting rules (Cook et al. 2023; Jansa, Hansen, and Gray 2018; Colorado General Assembly 2025a; Colorado General Assembly 2025b).

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Conclusion

The broader lesson is that public safety policy is not only about what happens after guilt is proven. It is also about whether rape kits are tested before cases go cold, whether survivors are kept informed, whether old homicide files have a standing statewide forum for review, and whether the public can see whether reform promises are being met. Colorado’s legislature has not solved every problem. As of early 2026, turnaround times remained well above the new 60-day goal, and no statute can guarantee that every cold case will be solved. But the Colorado case does show, clearly, that state legislatures shape criminal justice outcomes through money, monitoring, deadlines, and institutional continuity. In that sense, the legislature is not just reacting to public safety policy. It is one of the central places where public safety policy is made.

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References

Colorado Bureau of Investigation. “CBI Launches Public Dashboard to Track Progress on Sexual Assault Kit Backlog.” 2025. Colorado Bureau of Investigation. ��

Colorado Bureau of Investigation. “Cold Case Unit.” 2026. Colorado Bureau of Investigation. ��

Colorado General Assembly. “Senate Bill 25-170: DNA Testing of Sexual Assault Evidence.” 2025. Colorado General Assembly. ��

Colorado General Assembly. “Senate Bill 25-304: Forensic Medical Evidence Review Board.” 2025. Colorado General Assembly. ��

Colorado General Assembly. “Senate Bill 19-163: Continue Cold Case Task Force.” 2019. Colorado General Assembly. ��

Colorado Legislative Council Staff. “Fiscal Note for SB25-170.” 2025. Colorado Legislative Council Staff.

Colorado Legislative Council Staff. “Fiscal Note for SB25-304.” 2025. Colorado Legislative Council Staff.

Colorado Legislative Council Staff. “Fiscal Note for SB19-163.” 2019. Colorado Legislative Council Staff.

Colorado Office of the State Auditor. “Forensic Services Section DNA Evidence Testing Performance Audit.” 2026. Colorado Office of the State Auditor. ��

Cook, Philip J., et al. “The Impact of Criminal Justice Policy on Public Safety Outcomes.” 2023.

Department of Regulatory Agencies (DORA). “Sunset Review: Cold Case Task Force.” 2025. Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies.

Jansa, Joshua M., Eric R. Hansen, and Virginia H. Gray. “Copy and Paste Lawmaking: Legislative Professionalism and Policy Reinvention in the States.” American Journal of Political Science, 2018.

National Conference of State Legislatures. “Criminal Justice Policy Resources.” 2026. National Conference of State Legislatures. https://www.ncsl.org/civil-and-criminal-justice

National Conference of State Legislatures. “Justice Counts Initiative.” 2022. National Conference of State Legislatures.