In an political atmosphere overcharged with partisan rancor, changing how Colorado sentences criminals must make serious sense to rally strong support from both Democrats and Republicans this year.

A handful of bills build on recent state and federal successes in reducing mandatory jail and prison sentences for select crimes. There will be no losers from this and other modifications to Colorado’s justice system.

Two GOP-sponsored bills effectively reduce the amount of time convicts spend in prison for select crimes and circumstances. Many sentences have proven to be wildly expensive to taxpayers and suspiciously ineffective at being rehabilitative or able to keep state residents safe.

It’s an about-face from the late 1980s and early 1990s, when “tough on crime” became politically fashionable on both sides of the aisle, as Democratic State Sen. Pat Steadman pointed out this week. Those were days when “three-strikes” bills and hugely increased sentencing mandates began filling Colorado prisons, pushing the amount of tax dollars spent on housing prisoners higher each year.

Now, Colorado prisons have become a large and growing industry, run by the state and private companies alike. Critics of this blooming budget buster point out that Colorado now pays to incarcerate about 20,000 inmates each year, at a cost of about $780 million, pushing to the point where it eats up almost 10 percent of the state budget each year.

Study after study shows that in most cases, this is not money well spent. Longer prison sentences across the board do not reduce the rate of recidivism, nor do they reduce the rate of crime. Even the far-right, Golden-based think tank The Independence Institute has long lobbied against Colorado’s expensive and ineffective mindless sentencing mandates.

Certainly there are violent criminals out there who must be incarcerated for long periods of time, allowing the serious work of parole boards to determine when and if it’s safe for the public to release a convict.

Huge inroads to solving this problem are being made in Aurora and Arapahoe County, where specialty courts recognize criminals with drug and mental health problems, working to treat the cause of their criminal actions and provide ways to preclude more crime. These courts recognize that incarcerating drug addicts and mentally ill people is wildly expensive and ineffective in keeping them from becoming repeat offenders when they’re released.

All of the bills coming before legislators this year work to give judges flexibility in recognizing when longer sentences serve the public interest and when they don’t.

Senate Bill 98 goes the furthest in ending comprehensive mandatory minimum sentences, while other bills seek to reduce senseless consecutive sentences that illustrate how expensive and ineffective mandatory sentencing can be. All of these bills are sensible, overdue changes. Only SB98 is nearly an omnibus sentencing reform bill that should be scaled back to allow for interim committees to look more closely at some crimes and circumstances that might warrant automatic longterm incarceration to protect the public or past victims.

Missing, however, from each of these measures is the recognition that money saved on reducing the state’s prison population should be put toward research and programs that work to ensure that parolees get treatment, education and skills to help them succeed as ex-cons, rather than a recidivism rate in waiting because of untreated mental illness, homelessness or the inability to get a job and move away from criminal ways. Intensive supervised parole is a waste of money if prisoners don’t receive skills to succeed before they ever set foot outside their cells.

That’s money well spent on truly protecting the public and working to keep a growing population of people who endlessly depend on expensive government assistance.