What really needs to be considered is the re-establishment of “good time”, which virtually every other state offers as incentive to the incarcerated.

Benefits both the overcrowding issue and provides incentive for the men and women to not just “do their time” – but “do their time” positively.

Considering that in Idaho a person can get a long, long time at the pen for holding a small amount of weed – even if it’s for medical purposes – I find your description of those spending time at the pen a bit over stated. Candy bars….. well, better than a kick in the shin! I agree that it’s overcrowded but that’s because our state gets money for holding people there. Money easier gotten by legalizing weed and letting people from other states spend their money here…. gas, food, lodging…

They do this in the Drug Court and The Veterans Court. It’s humiliating and demeaning to the recipients. They give them a miniature Mr. Goodbar if they behaved week to week. They don’t choose to behave because they want a candy bar. Those that choose to behave are those that understand the rules and want to be successful within their program.
Idaho needs to rethink this “elementary school get a gold star for doing what you are suppose to do” attitude. How would you feel if your boss gave you a Mr Goodbar every week you showed up on time??

As a former state employee, I recall the year the legislature refused us a pay raise. To appease us, the Governor sent out “We appreciate you” ribbons to pin on our lapel. Now that was a real moral booster.

Monkey see. Monkey do.

Let’s recall the Boise Police Chief offered pizzas to the cop getting the most DUI arrests.

A reward for doing what you are supposed to do…

A Mr. Goodbar, donuts, or a pizza- it’s the same.

EDITOR NOTE–I believe the pizza deal was just among the officers. Chiefs I have known would not condone “quotas” of any kind. Point of the story was the idea of getting cons to behave for a chocolate bar.

Not sure where 3rdGenBoise is getting his or her information, but it just simply isn’t true that anyone is spending a great deal of time incarcerated here in the Gem State for “holding a small amount of weed”. In Idaho, simple possession of marijuana in personal use amounts is a misdemeanor, punishable by no more than a year in jail. (And getting any jail time at all in such cases would be unusual). To become a felony, the amount has to be substantially larger – definitely not what one would consider personal use or medicinal in nature. And even in those cases, the very maximum incarceration – which would be an unheard of sentence these days – is five years. In fact, the only substantial sentences that involve marijuana in Idaho and that result in any sort of significant prison time are in cases where there are other, serious crimes involved or where the defendant is convicted of trafficking, which is a world apart than simple possession.

Behave yourself or no sex change operations!

https://www.idahostatejournal.com/news/local/state-ordered-to-pay-for-surgery-for-transgender-prison-inmate/article_c43c405e-1e9b-57f2-9829-f774e12737d0.html

Paul – Incarceration rates soared after Nixon started the War on Drugs. Legalize all drugs. Leave people alone unless they are creating a disturbance.

We basically have a three-tier jail system (plus a couple more if including the nut house).

Pie in the sky idea: The big change I’d like to make is to have very limited space for the worst of the worst. The prisoners who absolutely did it and are serving long or life terms for violent crimes. If they have no chance of overturning the conviction etc., I see no reason to keep them alive. Money savings potential is large if we can get the lawyers to stop fighting for these maggots.

More doable idea: Change the laws and punishment of the relatively harmless stuff where we are harshly disrupting and incarcerating someone who was mostly law abiding and paying taxes before getting jailed for having some of grandma’s pills. (Numerous other examples of insignificant crimes blown all out of proportion by the for-profit machine.) This person needs forced treatment but typically not expensive lockup. We fix them and they keep paying taxes is the plan. No, we are not effectively doing this now.

We do have a broken system overall. Laws, Police, Courts, Jails. It seems to be a for profit system. We are rapidly becoming a police state where neighbors are claiming a man exercising on the sidewalk looks suspicious and the police will shake him down based on the simple say so of the paranoid citizen. Cops are still not being held to account for errors and violations of rights. Not to mention the ignorance of the population about the ever more intrusive surveillance by our own governments and police. How many new laws did they pass today?

The supersized for-profit jail is every Sheriff’s dream of a revenue stream just for his department.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_States

https://theintercept.com/2019/02/08/jeff-bezos-protests-the-invasion-of-his-privacy-as-amazon-builds-a-sprawling-surveillance-state-for-everyone-else/

EDITOR NOTE–What about the candy bar?