Idaho has some of the nation’s lowest crime rates, but its prison population is growing quickly at a time when most states are seeing declines.  So now all three branches of state government in Idaho – from the governor to the Supreme Court to the Legislature – are coming together to launch an intensive new effort to find out what’s going wrong and fix it, with the help of grant funding and aid from the Pew Charitable Trusts, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance, and the Council of State Governments’ Justice Center/Betsy Russell, Eye on Boise. More here.

Question: Talk about re-packaging at old idea. In the 1990s, then Gov. Phil Batt proposed to greatly reduce criminal justice funding by not imprisoning low-risk individuals caught for small offenses like low-level drug crimes, bad-check writing or driving with expired license or without insurance. Do you suppose something substantive will get done under Otter?