The Price Of Punishment Idaho’s Sentencing Laws Are Strict, While Washington’s Offer Flexibility

Washington and Idaho use very different systems to set prison sentences.

In Idaho, judges set the minimum and maximum sentence for each offender. Once the offender serves the minimum term, the state parole board can either release him with strict conditions or keep him in prison for up to the maximum sentence.

Washington state uses what’s called a determinate sentencing system. Punishment is doled out using a formula that calculates fixed sentences based on the crime and the offender’s criminal record.

Judges must sentence within a set range, or cite “substantial and compelling reasons” in writing for going outside the range.

There is no parole board.

The system also offers many firsttime offenders diversion programs that allow them to avoid prison altogether.

Hubert Locke, a college professor and chairman of the Washington Sentencing Guidelines Commission, said the system has made sentencing more consistent, but it hasn’t necessarily achieved its other main goal: reserving prison space for the worst offenders.

That’s because Washington legislators have changed the sentence ranges nearly every year.

The number of violent offenders going to prison has remained stable, Locke said, and the number of property offenders has risen slightly. “But the huge bulge in the Washington prison population has come primarily for people being sentenced for drug violations.”

The sentencing commission proposes and recommends sentencing ranges, but the Legislature has the final say. More changes in the sentencing ranges are expected, said Roxanne Lieb, who headed the state sentencing guidelines office for 10 years.

“There’s no common understanding about what low is and what high is,” Lieb said. “It’s kind of a moving target.”

, DataTimes