After he received a community corrections placement in Larimer County, Billy Hailey found work for eight months as a CrossFit instructor at local gyms, building up a clientele of two dozen people.

He began thinking about his life during his anticipated parole placement, set for June 2025. He had a job offer as a recovery coach to help other formerly incarcerated people reintegrate into the community. He regained his right to drive and signed a lease for an apartment.

“I was sitting in my apartment on a Wednesday night when my case manager called me to come in and discuss my parole the next morning, and then that’s when they arrested me and took me back into custody,” he said.

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Hailey, 49, did not commit a crime while in community corrections. Rather, the Colorado Department of Corrections had made a mistake. Hailey was placed in community corrections, the non-prison placement sometimes referred to as a halfway house, three and a half years early. He hadn’t been eligible for earned time — the reduction in sentence awarded because of work, program completion and good behavior — but his paperwork reflected earned time anyway.

The department discovered the error in a routine audit, 16 years after Hailey was found guilty and sentenced on two felony assault charges. He also has a previous kidnapping conviction.

“Everybody has heard the old saying, ‘You do the crime, you get the time.’ No part of that is about guessing,” said Dan Meyer, the executive director of Spero Justice Center, a nonprofit that advocates on behalf of incarcerated people in Colorado. “The whole message behind that is that the rules and the laws are supposed to be clear, and there should be a clear consequence for breaking or following the rules. This really undermines that idea, because it makes the rules seem unknowable.”

Hailey was sent to the opposite end of Colorado to the Trinidad Correctional Facility, and his new eligibility date for parole was set for August 2028. His fiance, who lives in Wyoming, cleaned out his new apartment in late January. She paid rent for nine months to keep his rental history clean. She still pays the car bill and insurance.

“Everything that I worked for out there is going to have to be built from the ground up again,” he said. “As you know, with anything, it’s always harder to do it a second time.”

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Colorado Newsline has communicated with four men who believed they were making progress toward release and rehabilitation through earned time until Corrections adjusted their sentences and rescinded their earned time through an eligibility review. Similar department actions between July 2025 and March this year have affected at least 10 people who are incarcerated, resulting in decades of additional time in prison, according to a Time and Release Operations audit document obtained by Newsline through a public records request. Department spokesperson Alondra Gonzalez-Garcia said an audit resulted in at least 20 people having time added to their sentences, including five who were put back in prison after being in community corrections.

Rehabilitation in the context of incarceration refers to the idea that the state plays a role in helping people become better members of Colorado society once they are released, often through the types of programs that teach skills and result in earned time awards.

“The key to rehabilitation is hope,” Meyer said. “People understandably build up hope that they’re going to have the chance to see the parole board and potentially earn release, and those hopes get dashed through no fault of their own, and there’s very little explanation, it really undermines the motivation people need to actually engage in rehabilitation.”

Clerical errors

Corrections conducts audits to make sure no one is released or moved to a lower custody level based on inaccurate data, Gonzalez-Garcia wrote in an email. Those audits are supposed to happen before moves to community corrections or parole, after changes to state law and on an “annual or semiannual basis,” she wrote. She attributed “clerical errors” to miscalculations of earned and remaining time, and wrote that the department “continues to refine its procedures” to avoid future errors.

“This happens very rarely, but it does happen. We do not have the legal authority to ‘honor’ a miscalculation once it is discovered. While we understand the impact on the individuals whose time was adjusted, CDOC must address the error once discovered,” she wrote.

A prominent example of a Corrections sentencing miscalculation occurred in 2008, when Rene Lima-Marin was mistakenly paroled eight years into his 98-year sentence. When the state discovered its mistake six years later, after Lima-Marin began a family and started a job, it rearrested him and placed him back in prison. A judge eventually ordered his release, and then-Governor John Hickenlooper pardoned him to stall a deportation order.

People understandably build up hope that they're going to have the chance to see the parole board and potentially earn release, and those hopes get dashed through no fault of their own, and there's very little explanation, it really undermines the motivation people need to actually engage in rehabilitation.

– Dan Meyer, the executive director of Spero Justice Center

Gonzalez-Garcia declined to make department officials available in response to multiple interview requests for this story.

“We understand that to the person affected, this feels like losing years of ‘earned’ time. However, in these specific cases, the time wasn’t ‘revoked’ as a disciplinary measure; it was determined that the time should never have been granted under the law in the first place,” Gonzalez-Garcia said. “Allowing these time computation errors to remain uncorrected would be against the law, contrary to our mission, negatively impact victims, and could possibly endanger the public.”

The time computation error in Hailey’s case was discovered during an audit triggered when the state’s parole board set a date for his release, according to emails between Corrections officials and state lawmakers obtained through a records request. Lawmakers who represent Fort Collins in Larimer County began seeking answers about Hailey’s case from Corrections in early summer 2025.

Colorado law states that different levels of offenses require people to serve certain proportions of their sentences. The audit took into account a section of state law that covers parole eligibility and earned time, and a 2020 court decision known as Owens v. Williams that requires a hybrid system for parole calculations. In some instances, it also considered a 2017 parole eligibility case decided by the Colorado Supreme Court known as the Fetzer case.

Hailey’s total consecutive sentence for assault convictions is now being calculated correctly, resulting in a longer sentence than before, according to Corrections emails.

“Part of what I think makes this so complicated is DOC data analysts, who are not lawyers, are interpreting case law,” said Heidi Tripp, a Denver-based lawyer. “And then one step beyond that, the Court of Appeals and Supreme Court judges are making this case law about calculations, and these judges and justices often don’t have any criminal experience or criminal background. There’s often a disconnect from their rulings with the actual applicability, and what it looks like in real life.”

“The realistic impact of being taken out of community corrections and brought back into county jail and then to DOC is awful,” she said about Hailey’s case.

A time computation report from October 2021 — the one that was in effect when Hailey went to community corrections — correctly applied the hybrid calculation but incorrectly interpreted other parts of state law. Hailey’s prior kidnapping conviction makes him ineligible for earned time, because it is defined as a crime of violence, according to the emails.

Kayla Shock, Corrections’ legislative liaison, wrote about Hailey’s situation in an email to Senator Cathy Kipp and Representative Andrew Boesenecker, two Democrats who represent Fort Collins.

“This situation is incredibly frustrating, as it seems Mr. Hailey has shown progress and rehabilitation within his community placement, and the incorrect calculation provided him an opportunity to exist outside of DOC earlier than what is possible from his sentence length,” Shock wrote in late May. “The mistake was caught quickly, but only after the Parole Board set a release date from his prison sentence.”

In another email, Shock wrote to Jeremy Brandt, Corrections’ assistant director of offender services, that Hailey’s case “clearly demonstrates how difficult the sentencing structure is within Colorado. With the new laws being passed via ballot measure, or new court rulings like Fetzer and Owens, that adds even more confusion.”

“I completely understand that sentence calculation is difficult and with staffing constraints, I would imagine even more so,” she wrote.

‘He is the only one that has to pay for it’

Emails show a monthslong effort from Kipp and another advocate, whose name was redacted in the records, to get clarity on Hailey’s situation and an accurate timeline, culminating in a July 2025 video call with Corrections officials, Kipp and Hailey.

After that meeting, Brandt asked the time and release division to audit people who were on the waitlist for community corrections.

It was during that process that Jesse Miller’s sentence was extended by eight years.

He was accepted in March 2025 onto the waitlist for the Men Overcoming Obstacles Reentry community corrections house, or MOORE, a 90-bed facility in north Denver. Throughout his time in prison, starting in 2002, Miller completed various programs that he believed resulted in eight years of earned time. He earned his yoga teacher training certificate, helped rehabilitate unruly rescue dogs, completed a culinary arts class and more. He eventually earned his college degree in sociology with Colorado State University Pueblo, and recently began work on his master’s degree.

“I committed some heinous crimes when I was younger, and I have spent 25 years in prison atoning for those, and doing what I can to improve myself, so that way I can return to society as an asset,” Miller said.

During his sentencing for attempted murder, assault and robbery in 2002, Miller and his family believed he would be eligible for earned time, and his time computation report regularly affirmed that belief, with a parole eligibility date inching closer on those documents. That turned out not to be true.

Instead of heading to the MOORE Center, Miller was rearrested within the Trinidad Correctional Facility and told that none of that earned time counted. He was never eligible.

Tracy Masuga, Miller’s mother, said she understood during sentencing that everybody gets a chance at earned time.

“It wasn’t why he did the programs, but it definitely was something that he was like ‘Shoot, yeah, 10 days off. I’m gonna get an extra 10 days off,’” she said. “And then he found out that every single thing he’s been told was a lie, and he is the only one that has to pay for it.”

His mandatory release date, when he must be let out of prison by law, was revised from December 2052 to October 2060. His parole eligibility date is now in March 2033.

“What part of rehabilitation does this fit into? It doesn’t,” Miller said. “I mean the best thing I can do is continue to do things I was doing before, when I thought I was getting out of prison, which is to try and do things to improve myself.”

Prison population balloons

Brandt wrote in a July 2025 email that earlier reviews of Miller’s earned time eligibility and sentence calculation were correct at the time, but “more recent guidance from the Attorney General’s office compels” a new method of calculation that treats his multiple sentences as one continuous sentence.

Miller’s convictions for crimes of violence, once they were considered as part of his continuous sentence, made him ineligible for earned time, according to the emails. The decision in the Fetzer case addresses how Corrections should set parole eligibility dates. Instead of relying on the governing sentence — the longest of any concurrent sentences — the department should treat multiple sentences as a single continuous one.

Lawrence Pacheco, spokesperson for the attorney general’s office, said the office cannot confirm or comment on any advice given to state agencies and declined a request for comment or confirmation on any updated guidance related to Fetzer. Tripp said that the person she spoke with in the attorney general’s office “insisted that there has been no new memo, that there has been no new case law, that there has been no new statute,” and that the sentence changes were not at the attorney general’s direction.

In Miller’s case, one of his convictions in Arapahoe County, a crime of violence, should have triggered an enhancement of a related Douglas County sentence, making him statutorily ineligible for earned time from the start of his sentence, according to documents from Corrections. Miller pleaded guilty to felony assault and attempted murder after he robbed a Parker grocery store and shot a police officer, who lived, during a car chase, according to Masuga. He was 20 years old at the time and got sentenced to 60 years.

“Jesse relied on the possibility of earned time when he pled guilty. Jesse has relied on his earned time and (parole eligibility date) computations over the years,” Masuga wrote in an email to lawmakers in July 2025. “For the first time in 22 years, the interpretation of the statute is that Jesse was never eligible to receive earned time. The result of this change in interpretation is immediate and incredibly harsh. It’s cruel and unusual punishment.”

Jerome Graham’s sentence was reviewed in December 2025, when it was determined that he also was not eligible for earned time due to previous violent crime convictions, according to the Time and Release Operations audit. His parole eligibility date was moved to June 2027.

“Time Comp did make a mistake releasing me, and yes it sucks being back in prison after spending nine months in a halfway house, but if I still owe time clearly DOC will see to it that they’re compensated. I did believe that my good time was being granted and that it voided the cases that I caught,” Graham wrote through the state prison messaging system to Newsline. He was convicted on a felony menacing charge in 2019, according to court documents.

A review of Nate Monroe’s sentence found that he is eligible to serve 75% of his sentence but ineligible for earned time, pushing his parole date to March 2032. He was convicted of two felony assault charges and second-degree murder in 1999. In a message, Monroe wrote that he completed programs in prison including 7-Habits, Power of Consistency, Conflict Resolution and several Christian-based courses in the belief it contributed to his earned time.

“On October 14th was when I was informed that I am not eligible to receive ten days a month of earned time, and all my previously awarded earned time was revoked,” Monroe wrote to Newsline. “All in all, I lost more than seven years of earned time. This unexpected occurrence prevented me from going home, where I have strong family ties, I had a job already lined up, and now I am in a state of uncertainty about what my future holds.”

The sentence adjustments come at a time when Colorado is dealing with a high prison population, which has ballooned to a point where Governor Jared Polis recommended opening two more prisons and state lawmakers approved money for 941 more beds in the current budget cycle. The Legislature passed one law this year that allows the state’s parole board, not just the governor, the power to grant parole for some people who committed a felony offense when they were under 21 years old. Another new law adjusts earned time calculations for certain people already eligible for earned time, and also creates a working group to form recommendations for a prison capacity management plan.

Those new laws will likely not impact the people in this story. For Hailey, he applied for clemency through the governor’s office last November with support from former case managers and coworkers. Polis announced an initial round of clemency actions in May, which included the early release of election-denier Tina Peters.

Hailey was not on that list.

“I am hoping for clemency,” he wrote in a June message. “But I am also very much interested in finding a solution to the issue that is affecting so many other people.”