Colorado. Division of Criminal Justice. Office of Research and Statistics.

In 2015 the General Assembly passed Senate bill 2015-185, the Community Law Enforcement Action Reporting Act, or the CLEAR Act. This act mandates that the Division of Criminal Justice (DCJ) annually analyze and report data provided by law enforcement agencies, the Judicial Department, and the adult Parole Board, to reflect decisions made at multiple points in the justice system process. The CLEAR Act requires that the data be analyzed by race/ethnicity...

This report is organized as follows: Section One describes the mandate to report per Senate Bill 13-283, data sources and the data collection methods used, the history of marijuana laws in Colorado, and the federal response. Section Two focuses on the public safety impacts of marijuana legalization while Section 3 presents information concerning public health. Section 4 presents impacts on youth, Section 5 provides additional information, and Section...

The information presented here should be interpreted with caution. The majority of the data should be considered baseline and preliminary, in large part because data sources vary considerably in terms of what exists historically. Consequently, it is difficult to draw conclusions about the potential effects of marijuana legalization and commercialization on public safety, public health, or youth outcomes, and this may always be the case due to the...