Panel Advances Prison-Crowding Bills

Gov. Phil Batt’s legislative package to reduce the number of minor offenders crowding Idaho’s full prisons cleared a Senate committee Tuesday and headed to the full Senate.

The four bills would:

Ease parole procedures.

Increase the threshold for grand theft charges from $300 to $1,000.

Establish a felony threshold for bad checks at $250.

Drop felony penalties for driving without a valid license.

The measures would apply only to those who commit crimes after July 1, not to those already convicted or with pending charges. Committee members agreed to add amendments to three of the bills to make that clear.

Sen. Jack Riggs, R-Coeur d’Alene, voted in favor of all four bills and made the motion to pass the grand theft measure.

“A felony should be something that is very bad,” he said. “Some of these limits have become so low - I think through inflation - that it’s not that hard to be a felon.”

Idaho needs to differentiate between “the dangerous and violent felons and those that may be bothersome, but not really dangerous to society,” Riggs said.

Three-quarters of those sent to prison in Idaho in fiscal 1997 were nonviolent offenders. More than a third were convicted of drug possession, drunken driving, bad checks or driving without a license.

Under the legislation, Idaho law on those crimes still would be tough.

A third offense of writing bad checks under $250 would remain a felony.

The driving legislation would remove the prison term of up to three years for a third offense of driving without privileges. Instead, a third offense would carry up to a year in jail, a fine of up to $3,000 and an additional license suspension.

Idaho is one of only five states that imprison people for driving without a license.

Current mandatory minimum jail terms for first and second offenses would remain in the law, but judges could order community service instead and could grant restricted driving privileges for work, school or family needs in certain cases.

The bill allows judges that option only if the original driver’s license suspension wasn’t due to nine serious crimes listed in the bill, from aggravated drunken driving to vehicular manslaughter to eluding a police officer.

Idaho has 52 reasons a license can be suspended, including too many traffic tickets, failure to obtain insurance and failure to pay child support.

Sen. Clyde Boatright, R-Rathdrum, supported all four bills.

“I thought they were all a good idea, especially raising the check amounts,” he said. “If we can just keep one person from going to prison over these bad checks, that saves us $17,000 a year.”

, DataTimes