41st Judge Conrad L Ball Award honors Laurie Stolen

Larimer County Director of Behavioral Health Services Laurie Stolen will be honored as the recipient of the 41st Annual Judge Conrad L Ball Award. Stolen will be recognized for her amazing accomplishments in behavioral health and the criminal justice system in Larimer County.

Stolen started work at Larimer County as a Recreation Specialist working in the jail with the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office in 1998. She quickly immersed herself in many other successful projects, all of which were focused at helping to positively affect the mental health of those serving their sentences while ensuring they have a productive life after leaving the jail.

In 2010, she was appointed Director of the Larimer County Alternative Sentencing Department (ASD) under Larimer County Criminal Justice Services. Stolen oversaw the expansion and improvement of ASD, again emphasizing the positive mental health outcomes of those serving their sentences.

She improved some of the more well-known innovative programs that strive to keep offenders of lesser crimes from serving time in the jail, such as Work Release, Midweeks, and Workenders, all which enable offenders to serve their sentences while keeping their jobs, keeping their family relationships stronger, and foster a smooth, productive transition into the community.

Many other jurisdictions in Colorado regularly look to Larimer County Alternative Sentencing to see how they can emulate ASD programs.

In 2017, Laurie Stolen volunteered to dedicate full-time effort toward work on Larimer County Strategic Plan Goal 1 [Safety and Well-being], Objective 2: advancing the effort toward a behavioral health facility.

Her work with the Sheriff’s Office and Alternative Sentencing was instrumental in showing the public the relationship between mental health, substance abuse, and offenders’ re-entry into the criminal justice system.

Stolen was able to demonstrate to voters via tremendous outreach how some offenders needed behavioral health treatment and that a multi-services behavioral health facility would be able to fill the gaps in treatment needed to help those struggling with substance abuse and mental health problems.

The other nominees for the 2019 Conrad Ball Award were Bob McClelland and Jeff Monson, of Authentic Manhood; Matthew Haltzman, of Ring and Associates, P.C.; the Honorable Geri Joneson, Denise Meyer, Valerie Gallegos, of Jumpstart; and Kandy Moore, of Counseling Service Associates.

The awards banquet will be held at 6:30 p.m., April 26, 2019, at Canvas Stadium at Colorado State University in the Stadium Club, 751 West Pitkin St., Fort Collins, Colorado. The guest speaker is Ms. Alexandra Walker, Vice Chair, Colorado Board of Parole. More information about this event is here: https://www.larimer.org/events/criminal-justice/forty-first-annual-judge-conrad-l-ball-award-banquet-2019-04-26

The Larimer County Community Corrections Department, on behalf of the Board of County Commissioners conducts the Conrad Ball Award process. The Conrad Ball Award recipient, co-recipients, or team, are selected from candidates nominated each year by colleagues, coworkers, and citizens. A full list of past recipients is here: https://www.larimer.org/cjs/comcor/conrad-ball-award

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