BOISE — Idaho has joined 18 other states in pursuing data-driven justice reinvestment policies in efforts to maximize prison efficiency, following 10 months of research on the subject.
Justice reinvestment has held a priority for Idaho Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter since the start of the session, and all three branches of Idaho’s government stand in support of reworking the state’s prison funding system.
Senate Bill 1357 stemmed from the state’s need to better utilize prison space and funds allotted for prison facilities, while also hoping to target discrepancies in the probation and parole supervision programs.
“We realized that unless we made some important changes, the prison population would continue to grow significantly,” Otter said. “That would mean spending much more without actually addressing the causes.”
Otter signed S.B. 1357 into law March 19, after it unanimously passed through both the House and Senate. Policymakers and federal data analysts said investing $33 million in the established policies will prevent the need to build a new $288 million prison facility.
Now that Otter has signed the bill, the five-year investment plan will begin for the new fiscal year July 1.
The initial steps to creating the reinvestment policies were taken in early 2013, as Otter, Chief Justice Roger Burdick, Senate President Pro Tempore Brent Hill and House Speaker Scott Bedke requested support from the Pew Charitable Trusts and the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Assistance to conduct research.
The overall goal of the policies was then established — Otter, Burdick, Hill and Bedke agreed Idaho needed a more systematic approach to reduce corrections spending while increasing public safety.
Program Director of the Council for State Governments Justice Center Marc Pelka said Idaho is a state with multiple deciding factors. He said Idaho’s crime rate is among the lowest in the nation, but the rate of recidivism — the number of individuals returning to prison after being released — is rising.
Pelka said the research pointed to Idaho as a state holding non-violent offenders behind bars for more time than any other state. To remedy that, the bill creates a clause in which offenders would be released on parole by the time they’ve served 150 percent of their terms — but they could still return to prison if they re-offend.
“The state’s prison population has increased 10 percent since 2008 and is projected to rise another 16 percent in the next five years,” Pelka said. “Policymakers and citizens are frustrated by rising corrections spending and the high rate of recidivism, so we’ve come together to identify a more effective path forward.”
S.B. 1357 is geared to strengthen probation and parole supervision policies to reduce recidivism, in hopes that active rehabilitation will decrease the number of non-violent offenders behind bars, while also increasing the facility’s ability to track and monitor recidivism-reducing strategies.
Bill co-sponsor Senate Judiciary and Rules Committee Chairman Patti Lodge, R-Huston, said the reinvestment policies are critical to more effectively using taxpayer dollars.
“Addressing such significant criminal justice system challenges required tremendous bipartisan, inter-branch collaboration, which resulted in the Idaho solution that was signed into law,” Lodge said. “This legislation will continue Idaho’s history as a low-crime state, while reducing recidivism and the resulting costs from growth in our prison system.”
Chloe Rambo can be reached at [email protected]