In the past 18 months, the population housed in Utah’s state prison system has grown by 362 inmates, Department of Corrections Executive Director Mike Haddon, said Tuesday, bringing the total count to 6,766 people.
That growth rate is “simply not sustainable,” Haddon told Utah lawmakers, with the state’s maximum prison capacity topping out at less than 7,000 inmates.
Haddon shared those figures during a hearing of the Executive Offices and Criminal Justice Appropriations Subcommittee on Tuesday.
He said his department is exploring various short- and long-term options for addressing capacity and staffing shortages, like new — but unfunded — partnerships with county jails to house prisoners and the prioritization of moderate- and high-risk offenders to ease the workload of agents in the Adult Probation and Parole division.