Batt Promises Alternative To Prison Spending Governor Says He Will Focus On State’s Sentencing Structure

Despite disagreement from some Idaho business leaders, Gov. Phil Batt on Monday pledged to find an alternative to pouring tens of millions more tax dollars into new prison construction to cope with mounting criminal convictions.

Batt told his Economic Stimulus Committee that he is initiating what he termed an action committee that will come up with alternatives to more prisons to check a skyrocketing inmate population.

“Some way we have to cut this terrible black hole that’s taking all our money,” the governor said. “It’s awful.”

His commitment follows the request earlier this month from Corrections Director James Spalding for $250 million over the next six years to essentially double the space in the state prison system that now houses some 3,000 inmates.

For more than two years, the inmate population has grown by an average of more than 30 a month and in recent months the increase has been 50. Spalding told state construction advisers that the only option to dumping more cash into new prisons is to alter the state’s sentencing structure.

And while Batt said his new committee would be looking at all options, he indicated that sentencing would be the primary focus, and that drew some dissenting comments.

“It seems like we’ve been saying for the last 30 years, ‘Get tougher, get tougher, get tougher,”’ eastern Idaho attorney Ray Rigby, a former prosecutor, said. “Now are we reversing that?”

Batt said he did not see a reversal on that get tough philosophy but a use of alternatives to incarceration for the 55 percent of the current inmate population that is behind bars for nonviolent crimes.

“We’ve got to find a better way to handle them - house arrest or something,” the governor said.

But Kaye O’Riordan of Albertson’s Inc. maintained that the sentencing laws, many enacted in response to public demand, should be enforced.

“And if that means we have to build more prisons, so be it,” she said.

The governor suggested that in the case of some mandatory minimum sentences discretion should be returned to the judge so cases of first-time offenders in a certain criminal category could possibly be handled differently than those who are habitual offenders.

Some corrections officials have raised questions about the hundreds of drunken drivers and similar offenders who are serving time in the state prison.