BOISE, Idaho — Editor's Note: This article was originally published by the Idaho Press.
Idaho’s state Board of Correction has unanimously endorsed plans for a new 800-bed women’s prison south of Boise, along with other smaller projects that would combine to increase the state’s total prison beds by nearly 1,050.
Idaho hasn’t built a new prison since 2000; a much larger $500 million prison expansion plan that the board backed in 2018 turned out to be a political non-starter and never was proposed to lawmakers. Wednesday’s board vote was the first step in a smaller and more targeted infrastructure plan for the state’s prison system, that focuses on the most-needed type of prison beds: Minimum custody. Those also happen to be the least expensive type to build.
“We want to make sure that we are building prison infrastructure that is conducive to outcomes we want,” said Josh Tewalt, state corrections director.
The plan would cost between $130 million and $170 million; if approved, it would allow prison space south of Boise now being used to house female inmates to be converted back into the department’s highest need, minimum-custody beds for male inmates. All told, the state would end up with 959 additional prison beds for men and 129 additional for women, while better targeting the available space to serve the prison system’s most pressing needs.
“It’s been a long road to get here,” Tewalt told the three-member board on Wednesday. “We went back to the drawing board. … What’s before you today is the product of that work.”
Board member Dodds Hayden moved to approve the proposal, board member Karen Neill seconded the motion, and it passed unanimously. Idaho had 8,537 inmates in custody as of Wednesday morning, including 373 housed at a private prison in Arizona and 526 in county jails. Of that total, 7,344 are men, and 1,193 are women.
Idaho currently has a women’s prison in Pocatello that includes medium and close-custody beds; that wouldn’t change. But most of the current female inmate population is actually housed in Boise, in lower-security units, some of which were converted from minimum-custody male prison units.
The proposed new women’s prison would have 800 minimum-security beds across three housing units in a setup that Tewalt said “looks more like student housing than a traditional prison concept,” along with 48 secure beds. It would include a new reception and diagnostic unit so that all new female inmates wouldn’t have to first be transported to Pocatello, before being brought back to their lower-custody prison placements in Boise.
The plan would allow 719 beds now used for female inmates at two other Boise prison facilities to be converted back to male minimum-custody beds.
The plan also calls for constructing a new two-story, 280-bed unit at the Idaho State Correctional Institution, the state’s main medium-custody men’s prison south of Boise, to include a new 140-bed medical unit plus 140 general-population beds. An existing annex now used for inmates with medical needs would be renovated and brought up to medium-security standards; and ISCI’s Unit 7, which long has faced legal issues over its small cells and outdated design, would be completely remodeled, decreasing beds there by 40 while modernizing design.
Tewalt said both the annex and Unit 7 have been the subject of court-ordered population caps and other restrictions under long-running litigation in federal court. “It’s an opportunity for us to just fix it, stop working around it,” he said. “We’d go ahead and revamp those two particular units.”
Unit 7, he said, is “about as old-school a prison structure as you can get. It gives us the chance to take that off the table in perpetuity,” while also creating space designed to promote “better outcomes.”
A 2020 study by the Legislature’s Office of Performance Evaluations found that Idaho could save money long-term by building new prisons, because current state prison facilities are older and inefficient, pushing up operating costs including staffing needs. Tewalt said the new plan drew on the study’s findings, and includes “decision points” built in, in future years, when other outdated Idaho prison facilities could be modernized.
Idaho’s prison population saw explosive growth through 2019, but it dropped during the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. That’s now starting to rebound again.
“What do we do for that growth that we know is going to come?” Tewalt said.
He noted that the state invested in resources in recent years, including a new “Connection and Intervention” program, designed to slow the rate of newly released inmates ending up back in prison. “The significant investments the governor and Legislature have made … are going to help us change that growth curve over time,” Tewalt said. “We do expect some growth, because at the end of the day, we’re dealing with people, and our population is growing.”
The board’s approval was a policy decision about the prison system’s infrastructure priorities. After that, Tewalt said, will come “a more political process,” in which it’ll be up to “the governor’s office, Division of Financial Management, the Legislature and other stakeholders to figure out what the best path forward is.”
Gov. Brad Little was at a funeral on Wednesday afternoon and unavailable for comment after the board’s vote. He’ll present his proposed budget for the state for next year to the Legislature when it convenes for its next regular session in January.
Betsy Z. Russell is the Boise bureau chief and state capitol reporter for the Idaho Press and Adams Publishing Group. Follow her on Twitter at @BetsyZRussell.
