Skip to content
Learn More → State by State

Colorado

Political repression plays out state by state — shaped by local institutions, prosecutors, and movements for defense. These are the documented political prisoners and cases the census holds for Colorado.

160Documented
3In custody
108Released

Eras of repression in Colorado

Where Colorado’s entries fall across the census’s historical eras.

1980s 30 1930s 26 1950s 20 1910s 13 2010s 10 1970s 10

Documented cases

160 entries in the census — every one stays in the record, whether the case is open or closed.

Robert Ellsberg
Released
Robert Ellsberg is a writer and publisher who participated in the Catholic Worker movement. He joined the 1978...
Elisabeth Epps
Released
Elisabeth Epps is an attorney, prison-abolition organizer, and founder of the Colorado Freedom Fund. Aurora po...
Roger Francezon
Roger Francezon was a Colorado coal-strike prisoner reported by the Daily Worker on November 9, 1927. Its repo...
Ripley Gibson
Released
Ripley Gibson was a member of the Scottsboro branch of the International Labor Defense in Denver. During the O...
Allen Ginsberg
Released
Allen Ginsberg was a Beat Generation poet, then teaching at Naropa Institute in Boulder, and a prominent parti...
William Golden
William Golden is individually identified in Page 3 in the front/rear-row caption of the Denver-Arapahoe relie...
Rodolfo Gonzales
Released
Rodolfo 'Corky' Gonzales was a former featherweight boxer from Denver who founded the Crusade for Justice in 1...
Antonio Guerrero
Released
Antonio Guerrero Rodríguez was one of the Cuban Five. He was convicted in the Southern District of Florida in...
Jennifer Haines
Released
Jennifer Haines was arrested on April 3, 1983. Plowshares peace activist named as a petitioner in the 1990 Sp...
Juan Haro
Released
Juan Haro was a leader and head of security for the Denver Chicano movement organization Crusade for Justice....
James Jobes
James Jobes is individually identified in Page 3 in the front/rear-row caption of the Denver-Arapahoe relief-s...
Lewis Johnson
Released
Lewis Johnson was a Denver Communist arrested under the Smith Act in August 1954 during the McCarthy era. He w...
Fred Keitz
Fred Keitz is individually identified in Page 3 in the front/rear-row caption of the Denver-Arapahoe relief-st...
Byron Kitto
Byron Kitto was a Colorado coal-strike prisoner reported by the Daily Worker on November 9, 1927. Its report d...
Paul Kleinbord
Released
Paul Kleinbord, a Communist Party leader in Colorado, was among the Colorado Communists jailed for contempt in...
John R. Lawson
Released
John R. Lawson was a United Mine Workers of America organizer and a leader of the 1913-14 Colorado Coalfield W...
Henry Maki
Released
Henry Maki was born Henrik "Heikki" Iivari Maentaka in Ähtäri, Finland. Henry Maki was a Finnish-American hard...
James Marshall
Released
James Marshall was sentenced on December 7, 2021 by Judge Gilbert Martinez to eleven years after pleading guil...
Francisco Kiko Martinez
Released
Francisco Eugenio "Kiko" Martínez (born in Alamosa, Colorado) was a Chicano-movement attorney from southern Co...
Pat McCormick
Released
Pat McCormick was arrested on April 14, 1983. Sister of Loretto raised on a farm northwest of Chicago, served...
Julie A. McElvain
Released
Julie A. McElvain was one of 22 Greenpeace activists federally charged after the September 12, 2019 blockade o...
J. A. Miller
Released
J. A. Miller was from Denver, Colorado. The 1921 Senate hearing records his sentencing on May 31, 1918 to two...
Candelario Montoya
Released
Candelario Montoya was a Spanish-speaking sugar-beet worker convicted with two other young laborers of murderi...
Jamshid Muhtorov
Released
Jamshid Muhtorov was a refugee from Uzbekistan whom the FBI began investigating after he began communicating w...

Institutions in Colorado

Prisons, jails, and detention centers in Colorado that appear in the census’s case files.

FDC EnglewoodLittleton, Colorado
4 cases
Jefferson County Jail
4 cases
Las Animas County Jail
4 cases
ADX FlorenceFlorence, Colorado
3 cases
Colorado State PenitentiaryCañon City, Colorado
3 cases
Mount San Rafael Hospital / Trinidad jail (militia custody)Trinidad, Colorado
1 case
Denver County JailDenver, Colorado
1 case
Colorado Department of Corrections
1 case