State sends 150 inmates to Texas

BOISE – An additional 150 Idaho inmates have been sent to an out-of-state prison, this time to the Newton County Correctional Center in Newton, Texas, officials announced Wednesday.

Their arrival in Texas on Tuesday brings to 452 the number of inmates sent from Idaho’s overcrowded prisons to out-of-state facilities in recent months. About 300 inmates are at the Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton, Minn., but they will likely be transferred to the Texas facility as well, Correction Department officials said, because Minnesota wants the room for its own prisoners.

Idaho’s prisons have been overcrowded for years, with state officials making do by simply adding more bunks to cells and creating outdoor prison camps.

But last October, U.S. District Judge James Fitzgerald agreed with an inmate lawsuit that the conditions were “dehumanizing” and ordered the state to house the overflow out of state. The judge ordered 200 beds removed from state prisons, ordered that no inmates be housed in day rooms or other non-cell areas, and that no inmate be required to sleep on a mattress on the floor.

Other efforts are in the works to ease crowding in Idaho, but they won’t solve the problem, Department of Correction spokeswoman Melinda O’Malley Keckler said. The state is planning a 300-bed, $16 million facility at the Idaho Correctional Center south of Boise, plus a 400-bed, privately run substance-abuse treatment center to serve as an alternative to sending addicted parolees back to prison. It’s not clear when those facilities will be open, she said.