Greg Mauro’s 30-Year Career with Community Corrections

Denver - Before Greg Mauro built a career in community corrections, he imagined spending his life studying fish.

His early interests included biology and fisheries science. Then, shortly before earning his undergraduate degree, Mr. Mauro changed course. He got a job at a youth residential center. The experience introduced him to people whose lives had been shaped by addiction, trauma, and the criminal justice system.

That job would come to define his career, putting him at the center of helping people get a second chance.

Thirty years ago, Mr. Mauro joined the City and County of Denver. Today, he leads Denver's Community Corrections Division. The division works in a part of public safety that most people rarely see. Its teams supervise people before trial, operate residential programs, and help people successfully return to the community.

The work is complex but operates under the belief that an arrest may stop an immediate threat, but it does not always address what caused the criminal behavior.

"We know that everybody comes home from jail, and about 95% of people come home from the prison system," Mr. Mauro said. "There has to be something that creates different choices or different skills for people, so they don't make those same choices again."

That's where Mr. Mauro's team comes in.

Police officers and other first responders often meet people during the most urgent and worst moments of their lives. Jails and prisons are designed to hold people. Community corrections works in the longer, less visible space that follows.

Mr. Mauro describes it as the "backside" of Denver's public safety system. It's the place where a dedicated team tries to understand what drove a person's actions and what might prevent those actions from happening again.

The answer, of course, is rarely simple.

"Many people who enter the community corrections program have struggled with substance use since a young age" Mr. Mauro said. "Others have lived through mental health crises, problems at schools, unstable housing, or years of unaddressed needs or poverty."

By the time they reach Mr. Mauro's teams, those patterns and hardships may have been in place for decades.

"You can't think that just because someone is going through treatment or working on different choices and thought patterns, that change is going to come easily," Mr. Mauro said. "Behavior change is hard."

It's also infrequently a straight line.

People may have completed treatment only to struggle later again. They may find a job, reconnect with family, or stop using illegal substances-only to face another setback. Mr. Mauro believes those steps, no matter when they occur, still matter.

"Sometimes the wins are small," he said. "Someone is really excited about their current job. Someone is excited about reconnecting with their family. Even if it doesn't last, it plants a seed of what could be. Maybe the next time, that seed matures into something more permanent."

A lot has changed since Mr. Mauro started his career in public service.

In the 1990s, Denver's use of electronic monitoring was considered innovative. Mr. Mauro remembers the city pushing early for options that allowed some people to remain out of jail while still being supervised and held accountable.

Denver later expanded its pretrial services. Today, teams use assessment tools to better understand a person's needs and the risk of a new arrest. One tool used today helps identify people who may be at greater risk of another domestic violence arrest before trial. Using that information, teams can adjust supervision and services.

Denver has also changed the way it provides residential services. Community organizations now work alongside city employees inside residential programs. That includes people in recovery and people who were once incarcerated.

For Mr. Mauro, their experience is what can help someone else.

The larger shift, he said, is a growing understanding that public safety requires more than one kind of response.

"Law enforcement remains essential", Mr. Mauro staunchly advocated. "So does accountability. But, reducing crime also requires treatment, supervision, community support, and opportunities for people to build more stable lives."

"If we are really going to be more successful at reducing crime and reducing new victims, this work is essential," he said.

After 30 years of service, Mr. Mauro does not point to a single program or policy as the most important part of his career.

He points to the people.

He thinks about the teams he has joined, the colleagues who have worked beside him, and the mentors who shaped his view of the profession. One mentor offered advice to Mr. Mauro that he has never forgotten.

"If you don't have a fundamental belief that people can change, this probably isn't the career for you," Mr. Mauro said, recounting his mentor's advice. "You won't last long in it."

That belief is certainly not blind optimism. Mr. Mauro has spent enough time in the field to know that not everyone changes. He remembers the successes, but he also remembers the missed opportunities-the people his teams couldn't reach or moments when the right help didn't arrive in time.

The job, he added, requires compassion without ignoring harm. It requires believing in change while being honest about how difficult change can be.

It also requires the ability to adapt.

During Mr. Mauro's career, his teams have managed tight budgets, staffing shortages, and growing needs among the people they serve. They've successfully changed Denver's residential model with limited money and little existing infrastructure.

Denver, he said, has for sometime led the nation in community corrections. At other times, the city has needed to catch up. Both can be true. Progress in this field-for clients and employees-comes through innovation, failure, and the willingness to try again.

"We've often seen our greatest successes come through failure," Mr. Mauro said. "It's okay to fail forward."

After three decades, the former fisheries science student is still studying complicated systems. Only now, the focus is on human behavior-asking himself what pulls people into cycles, what helps them find a way out, and what public safety can become when a city is willing to stay with someone beyond the moment of arrest.

"I've been proud to be part of this for so long and to be part of this community," he ended.