Elias Diggins
Denver City and County Police Sheriff, MPA, CJM, CCE

Elias Diggins was sworn in as the Sheriff of Denver (CO) in July 2020. He has been with the Denver Sheriff Department since 1994, holding all uniform ranks with various assignments during his career. He is a staunch supporter of both the community and the men and the women of the Denver Sheriff Department. He is a Colorado native and grew up in the east Denver neighborhood of Montbello.

He is a nationally recognized law enforcement official and a Past-President of the American Jail Association (AJA), where he is also a Certified Jail Manager. During his term as AJA President, he introduced an initiative titled “Gender Equity in Jails Across America,” which has been adopted by the Department of Justice-National Institute of Corrections, as well as facilities around the country. He is the recipient of several honors from various organizations, including the 2019 Legacy Award from the Association of Women Executives in Corrections.

Sheriff Diggins is a Certified Correctional Executive through the American Correction Association (ACA), where he is also a former auditor, commissioner and the Chair for ACA’s Commission on Accreditation for Corrections. He holds a Master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of Colorado and a Bachelor of Science degree in Criminal Justice and Criminology from Metropolitan State University of Denver.

April Pottorff
Director of Design

April is nationally recognized as an expert for her leadership in justice facility architectural design and planning. She has provided insight and understanding of the varied operational and organizational structures of justice-related agencies and utilized innovative strategies to create optimum working environments for justice personnel and all individuals that come in contact with these buildings.

The first woman in the state of Kentucky to be elevated to the prestigious College of Fellows by the American Institute of Architects, April has a long-standing involvement in the AIA’s Academy of Architecture for Justice (AAJ) sustainable community and advocates for a systems approach to evidence-based design applications for facility design. The result of her work has created strong civic buildings that enhance and contribute to the communities where they are located.

As a leading expert in the architecture practice and planning of structures related to justice, April has immersed herself into all phases of the AIA’s Academy of Architecture for Justice (AAJ) and the National Institute of Corrections (NIC). She has developed curriculum, taught seminars, authored numerous articles, and her work has been published and profiled in national journals and magazines. She regularly lectures at national conferences on topics that address planning and design issues related to justice facilities.

Eli Gage:

So welcome everybody to the 360 Justice podcast. We’re honored today to have Sheriff Elias Diggins with the Denver County and Denver City Sheriff’s Department. Sheriff. I been thinking about our podcast coming up and I think maybe you have the best Sheriff’s name in the country. It’s got such a nice ring to it. I just love saying it. You’ve been recently appointed as the sheriff. I believe that was in July. Congratulations. Thank you very much. And you are the outgoing President of the AJA.

Sheriff Diggins:

That is correct.

Eli Gage:

And you’ve had a long career there in the Denver Sheriff’s Department since 1994. So you’ve come up through the ranks.

Sheriff Diggins:

I have, I started as a deputy and have served in every rank and area inside of our organization.

Eli Gage:

That’s amazing. So co-hosting with me today is, is April Pottorff she’s a senior vice president with CGL and the company-wide Director of Design. So I appreciate both of you being with me today and taking the time to do this. So I’m going to start Sheriff with AJA, if you don’t mind. You know, that organization to me is one is such a great organization. All of you guys rely on it heavily from our side of the market. You know, the show we think is one of the best in the industry. And I’m curious from you what happens now? I think you left as the president in April, roughly.

Sheriff Diggins:

That’s correct. I swore the current president in on April 6th, 2020. President Marcia Travis from the Davidson County Sheriff’s Department is the current president.

Eli Gage:

So what happens now? Are we going to go to an AJA show next spring?

Sheriff Diggins:

Well, I guess it depends on whether or not there’s a viable vaccine that will allow a conference to happen. I’m certainly hopeful that there is a cautiously optimistic that there will be. I tend to listen to Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx and other national experts that say there may be a vaccine by then. I hope there is because we missed the conference in 2020. We had to cancel that conference, which was going to be here in Denver actually in Aurora at the Gaylord of the Rockies. Phenomenal property and we were very excited here locally to host that to be involved in it, actually the Adams County Sheriff’s Department was going to host, we were going to be heavily involved and that was going to be my outgoing conference. So we weren’t able to do that. So we’re very hopeful that we’re able to be in Ohio next year for the AJA conference in April.

Eli Gage:

So is that kind of a wait and see, I mean, you make that call as soon as you possibly can or, I mean, it must be something that the AJA is talking about quite a bit.

Sheriff Diggins:

I know that we have been in discussions I’ve been involved in some of those discussions and know that we are very hopeful that the conference happens just because it is a phenomenal conference and a phenomenal time for jail practitioners from all walks of life, whether they’re in service to organizations and uniformed civilian, whether they’re business partners such as CGL. Rather they’re just folks that are interested at such as students. It’s a great time or that think tank to get together, to talk about best practices as we work together to move our industry forward.

Eli Gage:

How have they I mean the training is a big piece of the AJA. How have they been able to, are they, are they conducting zoom training as you know, from a practitioner standpoint is it business as usual?

Sheriff Diggins:

Well, there are some virtual sessions that have happened. There have been webinars that AJA has hosted, and we still have the ability to have some inReach in various organizations by being a significant resource to them by providing subject matter experts that can help them walk through things. You know, one of the things that the AJA did at the beginning of the pandemic was serve as a sounding board for, “how do jails do this?” Because there was no playbook, there was no playbook for the larger community, but even more specifically for jails across America. And so we began to have conversations related to that. And I think that’s a, another benefit of the American Jail Association. In addition to the training, it’s being a place where leaders, practitioners from across the country can come together to talk about issues. And during the pandemic, it was vital to every community success that jails got it right. And so I think that was something that has been it’s been really taking precedence over more training. It’s it’s about how are we going to continue to manage COVID and to get through the pandemic together because social distancing, as you know, in jails is practically impossible, unless you really work to do some things that alleviate crowding, making sure that you’re having cleaning protocols, things of that nature. So AJA has really begun to think about how can we be of service to organizations by being a sounding board and putting out good recommendations related to that.

Eli Gage:

That’s great. Thank you. I know when you were the president, one of your platforms, there was gender equity, and I want to talk about that. And I know April knows a lot about that and has been working on a lot of the facilities and implementing that idea for our listeners. I’d be curious to hear from both of you, what gender equity in your mind in the criminal justice environment actually means. There’s cause I know there’s gender equality and there’s gender equity, and I’d be curious to hear how you apply that and how the, how they differ.

Sheriff Diggins:

Yeah for jails, gender equity really means being proactive and understanding that when you begin to think about the way that jails are built since practically the beginning of when they came into existence in the United States, it was always done from the lens of how men see how corrections and detention should be done. And when we did that, I say men, when we did that and we excluded the voices of women, we didn’t do them any service by not making sure that the things that women need while they’re in custody. And the design of the facilities was appropriate for returning women back to the community, better than what they came in. And really that’s the purpose of jail, right? It’s not to be overly punitive. I have a philosophy. In fact, here in the Denver Sheriff’s department, we call it the dual mindset that the deprivation of someone’s freedom is their punishment. And we also leave with our humanity, but in the deprivation of someone’s freedom the environment does not need to punish them further. Well, I can tell you that the way that jails and prisons have been built through a male lens, punish women unnecessarily because women and men are different. And so now that we’re in an era where we understand how important it is to focus on that, to make it a priority. Jails across America have really begun to think about how do we reframe reform some facilities and rethink the way that we design them so that when women do come into custody, that they are built with women in mind. And that’s really what the equity portion of that discussion is. There’s a facility that was built in Las Colinas, California. It’s, it’s actually in Santee, California, but the facility is the Las Colinas Detention Facility for Women, which is run by the San Diego Sheriff’s department. That facility was built specifically with a gender responsive and trauma informed approach. And when I heard about this facility, right, when I became involved in the gender equity work, I was told you’ve got to go and see this. When I got there, I was astounded at what they had done. I’ve been to jails across America. Not only have I been involved in the American Jail Association, but I’ve been involved in the American Correctional Association. I’m the former chair of accreditation for the commission on accreditation for corrections, I’m also a former auditor or the ACA. So I’ve been to jails for border to border and coast to coast. And when I go to jails generally, I’m like, okay, this is a nice facility, or that might be nice to have in a facility. When I went to Las Colinas, I was floored at the thoughtfulness that the architects took to design it, that the Sheriff’s Department took and making sure that they focused on gender equity, gender-responsiveness, and being trauma informed. I had never seen a facility in the United States that was to the level of the degree of being so forward-thinking as that facility, when it comes to returning women back to the community better than when they came. And so, as we begin to think about gender equity I think that’s really what it is. As far as jails are concerned. It’s about being mindful from the beginning of what we’re doing about ensuring that what women need while they’re in custody is absolutely at the forefront of everything that we do and that men and women are different. It’s okay for us to know that, to think that, and to act upon that and to put policies and practices in place that helps facilitate their return back to the community.

Eli Gage:

April, as a architect, a designer, speak to us kind of from the other side of that point of view, cause I know we spend a lot of time at CGL discussing that. Tell us your thoughts on that.

April Pottorff:

Well, women, there are some characteristics about the population that distinguish it from the male population. Women tend to be detained for less serious offenses. They tend to be less likely to have prior offenses and they’re less likely to reoffend. They come with, there’s a lot of history of trauma and of course we’re talking in generalities here, but we do see a lot more trauma among the female population. So with that comes low self esteem issues mental health, a higher degree of mental health issues, higher rate of substance abuse, and a fear of authority. And so the, the capacity to be able to trust someone in authority and especially, you know, that is especially relevant when you’re in a detention center and building trust with that person. They come with higher medical needs, especially with the women’s health side. You know, you’ve got women that in facilities that are pregnant, they deliver their babies while they’re in custody. So the, the medical needs are higher and there’s a lot of stress with women. Cause many times they are the, if not the primary, the sole caregiver of their children. And so there’s a lot of stress associated with while they’re detained, you know, have their children been turned over to child services, are they in the care of, and what’s their wellbeing? Are they in the care of a relative? So, and then finally is that women socialize differently than men., They’re very relationship driven, so they form very tight knit circles, and that does translate into differences ultimately and how we should plan design and furnish these facilities.

Eli Gage:

Give me an example of that, how it would differ, say between a men’s facility and a women’s facility.

April Pottorff:

So, if we use direct supervision, as an example, you know, you’ve got the big day room and what we’ve accustomed to seeing and is the sheriff was alluding to those have always been laid out with uniformity in how all the tables and chairs are arranged. And because women socialize in smaller groups, we need to furnish them different. The furniture should be movable. The furniture should have variety to it and be configured in the smaller group, almost lounge living room type settings around that. And if you can create even particular like alcoves. Las Colinas is an example, some of our units are mezzanines, but on that mezzanine, they even create alcoves. Having medical exam rooms near where the residents are is important. That’s operational as well as physical there’s also when you go to hone in on the bed or the resident room, you know, ideally, and the evidence supports this, everybody should have an individual room. There’s, that’s not what we ended up doing. And a lot of our facilities, and that’s driven by cost. It’s more expensive to build private rooms with plumbing. So we do see minimum and medium classifications and dormitory settings, but one of the things that’s important to reduce stress is having the ability to get away and have your own private space. It is a stress reducer. So in Las Colinas, for example, we have alcoves and they’re low walls. So whoever’s supervising that unit has view across it, but each alcove has one bed and a desk. So each woman has their own place to go and create that privacy within that dorm context. You know, if you do have women sharing a room, we don’t want to see them bunked. We should see them what we refer to as on the flat. I don’t know about the two of you, but I can attest, I wouldn’t want to be nine months pregnant and climbing up onto the top bunk. So it’s important that we, I think, and it normalizes it. It’s not just about the physical capacity of who’s being detained, but it’s also a more normalized setting if you have a bedroom with a regular bed and a dresser. So those are how I think it translates into some differences in how we should be designing and laying out our facilities for women. It also means that translates into, and this is a hard concept to get for a lot of our clients to get around, is the square footage per resident in a women’s unit tends to be more square footage per person, than in the men’s unit because of some of these features.

Sheriff Diggins:

Yeah. Eli, let me jump in on that point in April, that was a great point to make, because as an administrator, especially when you’re building a new facility, you tend to want to pack as many beds as you can into the square footage that you’re provided, right? You want to try to get as much bang for your buck as you can. And looking at a design that doesn’t have bunk beds, but has side by side, full beds, you need more room, which means you have less opportunity to pack as many beds into a pod. And what that equates to is a sheriff or a jail administrator, having to explain to their funders, whether that’d be a city council, County council, or whoever, the fact that they had to spend either more money to build out their project, or that they got less bits out of the project than they would have, if they would have done bunk beds. And for some people that may be a hard pill to swallow, but if we really are taking a genuine approach to understanding the needs of women and we are vested in making sure their were, we are returning them back to the community better than how they came to us, that is absolutely important. It starts with the environment, it starts with the environment. And if we don’t think that that’s important, then really we’re not starting from the best place you can, in order to facilitate that reentry.

Eli Gage:

I also toured Las Colinas and I was taken through there by the warden. And I remember kind of having the same aha moment that you had, which was, wow, this works. It was calm. It was peaceful. The inmates were pleasant. It seemed like a college campus to me. And it was I know CGL was involved in that and I was super proud when I walked through there to be a part of that. So I can imagine what it’s like for you, with gender equity as your platform and obviously you’re passionate about it. I’m curious how now you apply that in Denver.

Sheriff Diggins:

Well, we replicated some of the features that Las Colinas did in their design. One of the things that we did was we had to reduce the number of beds that we originally programmed inside of our addition that we built by looking towards having the full bed models in our rooms versus the bunks. This is what I mean by that. When we originally programmed it, based on the square footage, we knew that we could reasonably get 96 beds into this space, if we would have done it bunk bed style. When we changed the programming and we went to the full bit side by side inside of the, the rooms cells and still follow the American Correctional Association standards for unencumbered space. That number went from 96 down to 80. So we lost 16 beds and we had to go back and explain to folks in the city why that was important. But we did so by taking city council members to Las Colinas, by taking employees to Las Colinas, by taking community members to Las Colinas. So they could actually see what this looks like, get the why, and then come back to Denver and say, that’s what we need to build. So in addition to that, we took some of the other things that were done, the color palettes in that area are very, very different from the rest of the jail, which tends to be stark, battleship, gray, or plain tan color. In those areas, we have different color palettes we borrowed from Las Colinas. I don’t want to say stole, but we brought from them the idea of using murals inside of the dormitories with pictures of the Colorado mountains. We actually have Maroon Bells, which is a beautiful place in Colorado, as the backdrop for these pods. And we chose colors inside of the pod based on the color palettes in the picture of maroon belt. And so it all matches. We also took furniture ideas from Las Colinas. So everything that we did was very intentional. The committee was led by women. It was led by women inside of our agency, women from the community women from the city. I just kind of served as a resource to help to guide the project, but this was really driven by women. And when we went to Las Colinas and we came back and we began to design our building, it was with the mindset that, that is where we need to eventually go once we have the opportunity, but again, it takes time. It takes resources. It takes a capital investment. And so I think that’s a space that we will eventually get to right now. We had this,uI don’t want to call it a small project, but this renovation and addition that we had inside of our jail, on our campus, where we have the opportunity to do this and to utilize Las Colinas as the model for what we wanted to do.

April Pottorff:

And you know, you mentioned the murals Elias, you know, when it comes to daylight. And I want to talk about this for a moment because daylight’s critical to these facilities, men or women. We need to introduce daylight, not just daylight, but access to views and quality daylight, and there’s evidence to support that. Like you I have toured tons of facilities around the country and sometimes the only daylight, you know, is sourced through a skylight in the ceiling, which is actually makes the space more oppressive. Cause it makes the ceiling dark. Las Colinas is an example because of their location in the landscaping, they created these window walls. And there are lovely views of nature. Your situation’s different in your facility, on its campus, in an urban environment, and the fact that you were outfitting this in an already built structure,uintroducing the murals is great. And Las Colinas has that too. And there’s a study that was done in the Sonoma County Jail intake area that looked at whether a mural had stress, reducing impact like access to views to nature does, and the outcomes were positive in that regard. So, think in your case, you know, as much as we would love to get views to nature and every facility, I think it’s,mportant to highlight that for facilities such as yours, where that access is limited, introducing muralss is a cost effective way to introduce that into the facility.

Sheriff Diggins:

Absolutely it does. And we are fortunate. We built our building with very large windows with lots of access to natural light. And there are lots of windows inside of the rooms as well. So we’re very, very fortunate to be able to do that. But you’re right. I’ve been to places where that’s not the case. It’s not just a challenge for the minds of the folks that are in custody, but for the staff as well. You know, we spend 25- 30, I know deputies that have served for 35 or 40 years in facilities. And to be able to provide a positive working environment for them is something that we take into account as well.

Eli Gage:

In Hawaii right now, we’re building the women’s community correctional center and I think they are breaking ground very shortly. They decided to use a normative cell. There’s actually a manufacturer that makes a product called the normative cell. And it’s a series of daybeds bunks, lockers, etc. And they’re just a different color. And, and I’m sure April could spout off a number of different examples of why the evidence of color matters, but seeing it kinda live is, and being a layman in the business is really interesting to me. It’s not that hard to change the color and not paint it, the gray, the drab gray that you mentioned before. So it’s nice to see that that’s becoming more predominant.

Sheriff Diggins:

Yeah, couldn’t agree more. I absolutely know with the forward thinking leaders that we have in the large general network, the American Jail Association, the ACA, National Sheriff’s. Association, Major County Sheriff’s of America, I mean, I could go on and on and on with all of the acronyms in the organization. We have very forward thinkers and jails and prisons and community corrections across America who know how important the environment is and can see the change happening throughout my career.

April Pottorff:

Well, so with your recent womensunit talk about, cause some of this is about design and some of it is about operations and programs that you offer the women that, you know, distinguish it from the men’s units. Can you talk a little bit about some of the programs and also, I want you to add onto that is the talking about the training of staff. And you alluded to, you know, taking your staff to Las Colinas so they could see what that was aboutso talk about getting yours, going andtalk about what all you did.

Sheriff Diggins:

It’s really about being intentional when it comes to how you do the training, about prioritizing it as an organization, about making sure that you have folks that can talk about why it’s important and can get buy in from the staff. I think that’s the biggest thing is as organizations begin to think about making this a priority, there are some folks that really don’t believe that it should be for an organization. And so you got to get the right people to come in and to train your staff, talk about this and to become ambassadors. The first thing that we did was we stood up a gender equity committee that looked at everything there was to do with women in our organization, right? We had to first get a baseline of where we needed to go. They looked at everything for policy, everything for practice, everything for culture, everything is out of our organization through three separate lenses. First, it was through the lens of uniform staff and civilian staff, then it was through the lens of the people that are in custody, and finally it was through the lens of the community. How do we interact or react to women in the community? And so looking through those three separate lenses, we began to discover that we had some serious, I would call them challenges, inside of our organization that we had to address. So we began to talk about who would be great to do training? We began to partner with National Institute of Corrections to gave some training going. We also brought in some outside consultants to talk to our staff, and then we began to really focus on making changes to our policies, our procedures, and our practices. And I’ll tell you about one that is pretty unheard of in a lot of jails. You know, we have a lactation program or the women that are in custody. The old way of doing lactation in jails was women were told to go, as they became engorged, go into the shower and express to relieve themselves, which I think about that now it’s absolutely archaic, right? No one who has the presence of a woman who has had children, and my wife and I have children, I have five children, no one who has been in the presence of a woman who has given birth to a child and as nursing would say that, that is a rational response. And so in looking at what we could do differently, when it came to women who were pregnant and who had come into our custody, we knew that we had to do something different. And so we stood up a lactation program whereby we bought pumps. We have brought storage refrigerators. We have now hired on a lactation consultant that comes in to talk to women. And one of the things that folks have to remember is as a woman comes through custody and she has a child that perhaps has left at home, that child may be dependent upon that milk from their mother to survive. There’s some kids they can’t be on formula, right? So it’s thinking about things of that nature and introducing those into your culture, which sometimes can be a shock to your staff. But over time it becomes a part of your culture. That is now just a part of our culture, that we do that, and that our staff understands that. They understand how to respond and understand the benefit, not just to the mother, but to that child that is left in the community. So it’s about making those changes about getting the training done about changing your practices and your culture, introducing those ideas. And here’s the other thing, this isn’t reinventing the wheel. There are agencies that are already doing this. There are agencies that can provide policies. There are agencies that can tell you about how to overcome the barriers that you have. I think that’s one of the great things about our field is generally there isn’t anything new under the sun to a certain degree, somebody has already begun to work it out. You just have to seek that person or seek those agencies out to figure that out and go from there. This is one of those topics that definitely can be done by any department, any agency, there isn’t any reason why this should not be a priority for every single Sheriff’s department, every single department of corrections in the United States.

April Pottorff:

Yeah. You also introduced some yoga program. I mean, you’ve got certain specialized programming that you offer the women too, correct?

Sheriff Diggins:

Yoga, but we also offer yoga to men as well. We have you know, motherhood programs. We have a recovery and a secure environment for women that come in with addictions. We have that program for men, but we have it for women as well. We try to address their needs as best as we can while they’re in custody.

April Pottorff:

And so having put the women’s unit and program in place, you know, it’s always an opportunity to reflect and learn from. If you have the opportunity at some point to build another unit or expand the program, and hopefully you don’t have to because that means the numbers would go up, of course, but if the need is there at some point, what would you do differently?

Sheriff Diggins:

Well, in our current building, we do have some windows that have metal bars. They’re not really, they’re more like separated, I don’t even know what the architectural term is. Perhaps you can help me with it?

April Pottorff:

I think they’re bars,

Sheriff Diggins:

Large bars, right? That building that pod or those pods are on the sixth floor. There isn’t any reason to have restrictions on receiving the benefit of that natural light based on the fact that it’s all the way on the sixth floor. We put some pretty resistant glass in that window, and the probability that women are going to shatter that glass and escape is probably nil to non-existent. So there really wasn’t reason for us to have to do that other than currently there’s a financial restriction for us. So I would say if we could do something different, it would be to not just make the interior a little more relaxed, it would be to really think about does the body of that building need to be extremely hard? Of course it needs to be safe. Of course it needs to be secure, but I think it’s more so about putting the right thought behind, how is this going to be perceived? Is it absolutely necessary? So that’s probably something that I would say we would do differently.

April Pottorff:

Yeah that’s a good point in that your situation compared to Las Colinas is that they did a whole new facility. And for you, because if I recall, this building was part of an expansion of County out on Smith road, correct? And it was a floor that was shelled out that was waiting to be filled. So what you accomplished, you had to do within the context of what was already there. But it’s a good testimony in that, you know, for anybody out there that’s going to embark and implement something like this, It doesn’t always have to be a new building. There are ways to retrofit and have success with it.

Sheriff Diggins:

Yeah. That’s what we did on the lower floors where previously it was built for men. We had to remove urinals, right? And we had to replace them. We also had to think about privacy for women and where they would get dressed, and so we had to do some modifications related to those things. We also had to think about the physical or the exercise that the women would be embarking upon and making sure that that was gender responsive as well. So there is an ability for agencies to retrofit areas to transition from housing men in an area to women and being thoughtful about it is absolutely absolutely necessary.

April Pottorff:

So I have a question deviates a little bit. In your tenure with the Sheriff’s department, you’ve had the opportunity to work on multiple capital projects, right? The downtown detention center, there was the expansion of the County jail out on Smith road, and then the outfitting of the women’s facility. In 2006 is when the design planning and design of the downtown facility started, and I had the privilege of working with you on that. And that facility represents some innovative ideas, pretty novel ideaone in particular and best practices of its time. So it’s direct supervision, and that was a huge move culturally, for you all coming from the facility that you vacated when you moved into the new one. One of the novel ideas is that you, you know, the inmates move about the building and to court on escorted, and in my work with other jurisdictions, that’s just something, it’s hard for jurisdictions to get their head around. So it was innovative and its day and time. And we know that since 2010 really there’s been a shift in reform and thinking about these facilities from both sides of the table. I’ve even seen you evolve in embracing more therapeutic and rehabilitative notions than what were on the table at that time. So here’s a, what if, if we were going to sit down and start planning and designing that downtown facility today, what would you see doing differently to introduce more rehabilitate, even therapeutic concepts there?

Sheriff Diggins:

I would build more open pods that had spaces dedicated to individualized mental health treatment. And here’s why I say that, I think when you think about the population that is in custody generally and for us I can tell you at this moment with the pandemic, the number of people, the percentage of people that we have in custody that have a mental health condition is now up to 56%. And of course, Denver is in a Metro area so it’s quite different than a suburban environments we’re an urban environment. But I would say building out more space for individualized, mental health care and hiring staff that are dedicated to that is something that I would do if we had the opportunity in 2020 going forward. To redo what we have done here, the Denver justice center, and to also have, more mental health courts, to have more veterans courts. To really think about what we’re doing and to have more areas here that are dedicated to, what my friend Rob green calls, deflection and diversion, rather than incarceration. I think we have really gotten to a space where the cycle and the system of what we do is so cyclical that it’s like being on a hamster wheel. And that’s the reason that people stay in the criminal justice system. And addressing the needs of folks that have mental health conditions has to be a priority for every organization, so I think building out those spaces has to become something that every agency begins to do. Understanding that we need to shift from having security, uniform, deputy sheriffs, correctional officer, heavy organizations to balancing that out with more mental health, social worker, case manager approaches has to be a part of the conversation going forward. And designing facilities in that vein, in that mindset is the only way that we can begin to assure the community that we’re doing everything that we can while folks are in custody to address their needs. Now, that’s very important. We’re going to do everything that we can to address their needs. The community that we serve have to have a handoff for us as folks begin to leave so that when they become stabilized with us, when they have their medication set, and they have clear minds and can function in general population that when they leave that there aren’t barriers to them continuing to become productive members of society. And so it’s a holistic approach that has to be done. So for us, that’s what I would say I would do here in Denver and what I would recommend other facilities think about. But jails have got to no longer be silos and not express to the community how important it is that there’s a clean handoff for the folks that are in our custody as they come back home so that they can stay stabilized and they can become productive and have all the resources that they need in to stay off of the hamster wheel.

April Pottorff:

So, you know, I’ve thought about that project a lot because there’s so many wonderful things about the detention center in Denver. And you know, we evolve, we continue to evolve and what our practices and philosophies are with corrections and Denver was done about three years too early to be in that wave. Cause every project since then has had full mental health with clinicians and step down units. And it was done just slightly ahead of that becoming the movement with the mental health side of corrections and what we were seeing in jails. And you mentioned Secretary Green CGL has had the privileged of working with him and his team. Right now, we’ve been doing their planning studies for the new Baltimore Therapeutic Treatment Facility. So yeah, there’s a lot of innovative notions there and the engagement with the community and choices and resources that are being put into that as well as the therapeutic side for those that have that aren’t just released. But the therapeutic side of those that are detained the resources and clinical side of all of that. So it’s a very exciting project to be involved with.

Sheriff Diggins:

Yeah. Rob is really ahead of a lot of us when it comes to his thoughts and ideas about what we should be doing. Rob is one of my very, very best friends in the industry. He’s really a rock star, right? And when it comes to someone who gets it about what we should be doing, he, John Wetzel, I mean, I could go down the list just naming folks that are very forward thinking when it comes to what we should be doing. Daniel Jr. Down in Miami, I could just go on and on about folks that really are in a space that we all should be in, which is really putting our money where our mouth is.

Eli Gage:

That’s really insightful. It’s effecting change.

Sheriff Diggins:

Absolutely.

Eli Gage:

It’s funny that April says it came too early, but three years too early seems not like a long time, but I’m watching it from our seat. We’re seeing it change and that’s exciting. I’m going to switch gears real quick, because I want to be cognitive of your time, Sheriff. Yesterday we got postponed because you got called into a budget meeting with Mayor Hancock, which obviously took precedent. Is this first budget cycle for you, obviously as a sheriff, but have you been through this process before?

Sheriff Diggins:

I have, you know, before I was the SheriffI was a chief. I was a chief for 11 years and actually served as the Interim Sheriff of Denver for 452 days and 10 hours, not that I was counting back in 2014. So as the Chief of Operation and as the Division Chief of the jail I’ve had the pleasure of being involved in budget practices and have had a front row seat to be able to see how they occur helping to design our budget platform to be able to help, to bring forward ideas about what should be done. So this is the second time that I’ve had the opportunity to be the person who is directly responsible for the budget and as the City and County of Denver like most cities has suffered because of not just the economic downturn, which was going to be coming 2020. There were a lot of people who predicted that, including our Chief Financial Officer, Brendan Hanlon, as well as our Mayor last year, now that the Pandemic came, most cities are struggling including the city of Denver when it comes to our budgets. And so this budget season is one that is very is very tough. You had to make a lot of cuts. We’ve had to figure out ways to tighten our belts in ways that haven’t been done before, even more so than when we went through the great recession back in 2008, 2009, I was a Chief right on the tail end of that in the beginning of 2009 and was able to see what we had to do. I can tell you that this is very, very different. You know, we’re doing a furlough days in the City and County of Denver. We’re holding positions open. It’s just a very tough time for us all. But I think we have some very, very smart people who are in charge of our finances for the city, doing a great job about leading all of the city organizations about where we should be going to make sure that we stay whole and we’re gonna do this together and then get on the other side eventually. I’m sure we’ll turn around. The City of Denver will turn around the state of Colorado and other cities will as well. We just have to have to get through.

Eli Gage:

I don’t think you’re alone.

Sheriff Diggins:

No, not at all.

Eli Gage:

Well, Sheriff Elias, Diggins, thank you for making time for us today.

Sheriff Diggins:

Eli was my pleasure. April, it’s always good to see you.

April Pottorff:

Likewise.

Sheriff Diggins:

And I look forward to us seeing each other again at conference. And everyone else that’s listening, we’re all gonna get through this together. Be safe and mask up.

April Pottorff:

That’s right.

Eli Gage:

Thank you, April. Thank you, Sheriff. Well again, thank you to Sheriff Elias Diggins. What a impressive individual. You can find our podcast on all the major podcast platforms, Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, and Stitcher. And it’s also available on our website at cglcompanies.com. So please listen, rate it, subscribe. If you’re interested in being a future guest, please email us at podcast@cglcompanies.com. Thanks again for listening.