Here is what happens when you are governed by wingnuts whose thinking on crime doesn’t extend beyond the punitive.
BOISE – Nonviolent criminals are being kept behind bars in Idaho twice as long as they are in the rest of the nation.
That’s among the major findings of a nine-month study into how Idaho could spend its money better and get better outcomes from its criminal justice system. Researchers for the Council of State Governments and the Pew Charitable Trusts found that the state has one of the nation’s highest and fastest-growing incarceration rates, despite its low rates of crime.
Idaho House Judiciary Chairman Rich Wills, R-Glenns Ferry, a retired state trooper, called the data a “wake-up call.”
The study also showed that Idaho suffers from a “revolving door of recidivism,” driven in part by a system that sends probationers and parolees back to prison – filling 41 percent of the state’s prison beds – without tailoring the penalties to their violations. If the state were to enact a package of reforms, the researchers estimated it could save $255 million on prison costs in five years, while investing just $33 million into better supervision and tracking programs.
They won’t do anything with the results of this study because it would require them to use parts of their brain not shared with lizards.