With Prisons Full, Idaho DOC Requests $45 Million for Three New Facilities
Idaho prisons are significantly overcrowded. The state currently incarcerates a total of 10,000 people, but only has enough space for 8,200. As a result, the Idaho Department of Correction (DOC) is requesting $45.3 million to open three new facilities within the next year. While state lawmakers had previously approved funding to construct the facilities, that money did not include appropriations to furnish, equip or staff them. The three facilities include a new women’s prison and two new units at separate men’s prisons.
Idaho incarcerates women at the highest rate in the country. Lacking space, there are currently around 400 women and 300 men held at the South Idaho Correctional Institution in Kuna (“Kuna”), a prison originally designed for men. To access medical services, such as a dental appointment, women prisoners at Kuna must walk through the men’s side of the prison–and guards must shut down large parts of it. Other women prisoners for whom there isn’t space in a prison are sent to county jails.
The new women’s prison, which was approved in 2022 at an initial cost of $112.4 million, is scheduled to open in December 2027. Slated for later that year, the second new facility will be a men’s unit at Kuna designed for an “increasingly aging and infirm population,” the DOC budget request stated. A 112-bed unit at the Idaho Correctional Facility in Orofino is the third new facility.
Source: Idaho Capital Sun
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