Iowa prisons house fewer inmates
BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESSDes Moines - The number of inmates in Iowa prisons is down, due in part to a drop in the number of prison terms and fewer offenders returning for parole or probation violations, corrections officials said.
As of Monday, which marked the end of fiscal 2008, the state prisons housed 8,740 inmates. That's down 66 inmates from the year before and marks only the third annual decline in 12 years, said Department of Corrections Director John Baldwin.
The 1,800 new commitments to Iowa prisons was down 162 placements from the previous year and was the lowest total since fiscal 1997. Baldwin called it a ''significant'' decline.
He said the inmate counts for both men and woman were down from the previous year.
The decline would have been greater, but the corrections department is temporarily housing about 140 Linn County inmates after flooding forced evacuations last month, Baldwin said.
He said it's difficult to tell if Iowans were committing fewer major crimes or if the drop was related to plea bargains or if other factors were involved.
Baldwin believed that the state's investment in community-based corrections was ''paying off.'' He said there were 43 fewer prison admissions involving probation revocations and a decline of 53 parolees returning to prison.
Iowa's prison system has a designed capacity of 7,414 beds. The record high in Iowa's prison population was recorded on Oct. 3 at 8,940 inmates.
This year, the Legislature approved $130 million for prison construction.
That includes replacing the Iowa State Penitentiary in Fort Madison and upgrading the women's prison at Mitchellville.
