Same crime, more prison

Utah is not part of the Pacific Northwest, so why compare it with Idaho? Because a fair comparison has to hold as much constant as possible. Utah borders Idaho, shares its fast growth, its conservative politics, and much of its culture, and in 2024 had a violent crime rate within one point of Idaho's. If Idaho's prison population were simply a response to crime, Utah's would look similar. It doesn't.

Washington and Oregon, BarNone's other home states, make weaker comparisons on this question because their crime rates are much higher than Idaho's. To make sure Utah isn't a cherry-picked outlier, this brief also compares Idaho with all six states that border it.

Montana and Wyoming come closest to Idaho's imprisonment rate. Montana has nearly twice Idaho's violent crime. Wyoming has slightly less violent crime than Idaho and still imprisons people at a lower rate. Washington and Oregon have far more property crime and far lower imprisonment. Across all seven states the correlation between violent crime and imprisonment is 0.04, effectively zero. With only seven states that number should not be overread, but it points the same way as everything else in this brief: the size of a state's prison system reflects its policy choices more than its crime.

Idaho tried to address both doors through its 2014 Justice Reinvestment Initiative. The most detailed public analysis of Idaho's admissions we could find dates to 2013. If that is still the latest, it is itself a finding: Idaho is deciding whether to build new prisons without a current, public picture of who is entering them and why.

Sentencing law adds pressure on length of stay. Idaho's 2024 fentanyl trafficking law (HB 406) set mandatory minimum terms of 3, 5, or 10 years depending on quantity, taking that decision away from judges. Its effect on the population has not yet been publicly measured.

• A year in an Idaho prison costs about $36,500 per person. A year on parole costs about $3,300.
• Housing people in county jails and out of state is expected to cost around $51 million this year, with that budget growing just over 69%.
• The Department of Correction is asking for $45.3 million to open nearly 1,000 new beds, including a 560-bed women's prison estimated to cost $183 million to build.

A decade ago Utah looked a lot like Idaho does now. Its prison population grew 18% from 2004 to 2013, mostly because people were staying longer. Two-thirds of 2013 prison admissions were people returned for supervision violations, and 62% of new commitments were for nonviolent offenses. Without changes, the state projected 2,700 more people in prison by 2034.

In 2015 Utah passed House Bill 348. It:

• Reclassified first and second drug possession convictions from felonies to misdemeanors.
• Capped jail and prison time for technical violations of probation and parole and required swift, proportionate sanctions instead of automatic revocation.
• Let people on supervision earn 30 days off for each month of compliance.
• Redirected nearly $14 million toward treatment, county programs, and supervision.

The reforms were projected to avert nearly all of that growth and save more than $500 million over 20 years. They are not the end of the story: Utah's own projections now show its prison population rising again. But Utah chose to act on the front and back doors before building, and its imprisonment rate today is well under half of Idaho's.

• Correlation is not causation. Comparing states cannot prove Idaho could shrink its prisons with no change in crime. It does show Idaho's imprisonment is not explained by high crime.
• Seven states is a small sample. The near-zero correlation is suggestive, not conclusive.
• Utah is not Idaho. The states differ in population, urban share, and how their courts and supervision systems work.
• Crime data has gaps. FBI figures depend on which agencies report, and the 2021 switch to a new reporting system disrupted national data.
• Different counts measure different things. This brief uses sentenced state prisoners. Broader measures that include jails and youth facilities put Idaho at 720 per 100,000 and Utah at 396, the same pattern.
• Some Idaho figures come from news reporting. Cost, capacity, and parole figures are as reported by the Idaho Capital Sun, East Idaho News, and InvestigateWest from Department of Correction and parole commission data.

Idaho's lawmakers should have answers to these questions before approving new prison capacity:

• Who is coming in? A current breakdown of admissions by type: new sentences, riders, probation revocations, parole revocations, and technical violations with no new crime.
• Who is staying past eligibility? How many people are past their parole eligibility or tentative release date, and what condition is holding each one.
• What are mandatory minimums adding? How many people have been sentenced under the 2024 fentanyl law, and for how long.
• Why women? Admission offenses, revocation rates, and sentence lengths for women compared with men and with Utah.

BarNone will pursue these questions through public data and records requests and publish what we find. If you have data or experience that can help, get in touch.

• Imprisonment rates are sentenced people under state prison jurisdiction per 100,000 residents on Dec. 31, 2023, from the Bureau of Justice Statistics. They exclude jails and federal prisons.
• Crime rates are FBI Uniform Crime Reporting rates for 2024, the latest year available, as compiled by USAFacts.
• The comparison group is every state that shares a border with Idaho: Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Wyoming, and Montana.
• The correlation is a Pearson coefficient between 2024 violent crime and 2023 imprisonment across the seven states. Without Idaho it rises to 0.37, still weak.
• Prison and crime years differ by one year because each source's latest release covers a different year.
• All figures are in the downloadable CSV, with a source for every number.