Officials tackle prison overcrowding options

BOISE – For years, Idaho has struggled with too many inmates and not enough space in the state’s prisons.

Now state officials at nearly every level of criminal justice – from the courts to the parole boards – are trying to find a way to ease the crowding.

“We’ve got to assess the system from the very beginning all the way through,” said Idaho Department of Correction Director Vaughn Killeen.

“Should we have specialty institutions? Leverage the economy of scale?”

There’s not likely to be one easy answer.

Killeen and the nearly 30 other criminal justice officials and lawmakers on the newly formed Innovators Workgroup for Offender Management are trying to find ways to halt the growth in Idaho’s prison population.

First, they must agree on the key problems.

“It’s a massive challenge, but what they’ve started here is a good step toward finding a solution,” Mike Matthews, a commissioner with the Idaho Commission of Pardons and Parole, said during the group’s meeting on Tuesday.

Last year, U.S. District Judge James Fitzgerald agreed with an inmate lawsuit that the crowded prison conditions were “dehumanizing” and ordered the state to house the overflow out of state.

Now several hundred inmates are being housed in Texas prisons, and the state is planning a new 300-bed, $16 million facility at the Idaho Correctional Center south of Boise.

A 400-bed privately run substance abuse treatment center, designed to serve as a prison alternative, is also in the works.

Still, Killeen and other criminal justice officials have warned that given the ever-increasing numbers of inmates in the state, a crisis is looming.

Even with the added inmate beds, if no other actions are taken prison officials estimate that by the end of 2010 as many as 1,400 inmates will be housed out of state, at a higher cost to Idaho taxpayers.

Patti Tobias, the state courts administrator for the Idaho Supreme Court, said judges would be able to more precisely tailor sentences for particular offenders if they had a clear idea of whether offenders would have access to educational, substance abuse or other programs once in prison.

“If judges have community treatment options available, they will use them,” she said.

The state must also make clear to inmates just how many times they’ll be offered a chance at such programs, Killeen said.

“I wasn’t an easy sell when it came to substance abuse programs and all the other stuff,” he said. “Today I’m a very strong believer that appropriate treatment for appropriate inmates is very good common sense.”

However, inmates who have been unsuccessful in the programs shouldn’t fill spots that could be used by others awaiting treatment, Killeen said.