Iowa prisons overcrowded, but not like California

DES MOINES – Iowa's prison system is overcrowded but there's no worry of any court-ordered “de-population” action similar to what recently occurred in California that could result in the release of nearly 40,000 prisoners, a state attorney told the state Board of Corrections Friday.

William Hill of the Iowa Attorney General's Office said Iowa previously had been under court-ordered consent decrees before 1996 - including one that limited the population at the Iowa State Penitentiary in Fort Madison to 550 inmates - but no such intervention currently exists and there are no looming “conditions of confinement” cases pending in the courts that would cause a concern. He said past court challenges at facilities in Anamosa and Mitchellville were dismissed.

“We're certainly on top of what's going on out there. I don't see that hitting here in Iowa at the present time,” Hill told the board members and state Department of Corrections' officials. “We don't have anything like that currently in the pipeline; we don't have any conditions challenges like that pending; I don't see those problems arising here.”

Corrections chief John Baldwin noted that the population in Iowa's nine prisons had grown to a record 9,009 several months ago due to several prolonged vacancies on the Iowa Board of Parole. But he noted the current prison count stood at 8,840, which was still 23 percent above the system's design capacity of 7,209 inmates.

Baldwin said parole releases, which rose to 125 last month, along with a decrease in the number of new court commitments and an increase in the number of inmates discharging their sentences has begun lowering the overall count and he hopes to whittle the prison population down to about 8,000 over time.

The issue of prison overcrowding received new attention last month when the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision, upheld a judicial order that could result in the release of tens of thousands of prisoners from the overcrowded California penal system. The number of prisoners in California continues to fluctuate, but at one time the prison system there held nearly twice as many inmates as the 80,000 it was meant to hold.