Most Idahoans know the Department of Corrections exists. Very few know what happens inside it, how strained it currently is, or what it’s actually trying to accomplish. On the latest Ever Onward Podcast, host Tommy Ahlquist sat down with Dr. Bree Derrick, who was appointed director of IDOC in April 2025, to pull back the curtain on all of it: the numbers, the philosophy, the programs, and the places where the community can make a genuine difference.
The conversation is a companion to the previous episode with Dennis Dillon president Dwayne Sessions and employee Joey, which put a human face on second chance hiring. This one puts the systemic context around it.
The Numbers Are Serious
Idaho’s prison population has reached 10,101 people against a rated capacity of 8,232. That’s roughly 1,900 people over capacity, a number that has grown by 458 since 2024 alone at a cost of $14.2 million in additional expenses. The fully loaded cost of housing one person in an Idaho prison runs between $85 and $98 per day. With a median sentence length of seven years, the math compounds quickly.
To manage the overflow, IDOC is currently sending approximately 950 people out of state to a contracted facility in Arizona, with additional overflow housed in county jails across Idaho. Ada and Canyon County are absorbing a significant share of that burden at a reimbursement rate that doesn’t cover actual costs, a dynamic that creates pressure on local law enforcement budgets and contributes to pretrial release of people facing serious charges.
Five new construction projects are in progress that will add just over 1,000 beds between late 2025 and mid-2028, including a new women’s facility near Kuna, a new unit at Idaho State Correctional Institute, a unit in Orofino, a community reentry center in Pocatello, and a specialty facility for people deemed dangerously mentally ill. The hope is that those beds will allow IDOC to bring people back from Arizona and relieve county jail pressure. Whether growth will outpace that construction is an open question.
What IDOC Is Actually Trying to Do
The frame Derrick uses for her agency’s work is worth understanding because it’s different from the way most people think about incarceration. The punishment, she said, is the sentence itself, the deprivation of liberty handed down by a court. IDOC’s job, as written into Idaho law, is the safe care, custody, and rehabilitation of the people in its charge.
The practical motivation for that framing is direct: approximately 97% of everyone who enters an Idaho prison will eventually be released back into the community. “What kind of neighbor do you want to have?” Derrick asked. “Do you want that to be an aggressive interaction, or do you want him to say good morning and walk by?”
If the answer is the latter, then the question is what prepares people for that outcome. IDOC runs a school inside its facilities that graduated roughly 200 people with GEDs last year, a number Derrick believes made it the largest GED-granting school in the state at the time. Pell Grant eligibility was restored for incarcerated people at the federal level about two years ago, and IDOC now has approximately 200 people enrolled in college coursework while incarcerated. Substance use treatment, anger management, vocational training, and financial wellness classes round out the programming menu.
The recidivism picture is more nuanced than the headline number suggests. Ahlquist cited a 72% figure in his opening, which reflects people returning on new charges at some point. Derrick offered a different frame: about 62% of people who are released from IDOC never return. Two out of three people get out and stay out. The goal is to make that number higher.
Mentoring Changes the Culture Inside
One of the most striking things Derrick described wasn’t a formal program but an organic one that IDOC has worked to support and expand: peer mentoring inside the facilities.
The program started with incarcerated people themselves. People who had been inside for years said they wished someone had told them certain things when they arrived, and asked if they could be that person for newer arrivals. IDOC said yes and found ways to resource it. The program has since spread to all of IDOC’s prison facilities.
The effects have been measurable. Facilities with active mentoring programs show meaningful changes in culture, with less antagonism between incarcerated people and staff and more of a sense of shared humanity on both sides. “It started to humanize the people who are incarcerated to our staff,” Derrick said. “And the benefit is they’re less likely to do violent bad things towards our staff.”
The deeper point is about purpose. People serving as mentors aren’t just helping others; they’re finding meaning in their own situation. That psychological shift, having something to contribute and someone to be accountable to, is one of the ingredients Ahlquist keeps returning to: purpose, a job, and someone who believes in you.
How the Community Can Plug In
This is where the episode becomes most useful for anyone listening who wants to act rather than just understand.
Volunteering as a mentor. IDOC runs a community mentoring program called Free to Succeed, accessible through the department’s website, that connects community volunteers with people who are currently incarcerated or recently released. Anyone with time and willingness to show up consistently can apply.
Volunteering a skill. IDOC welcomes people with specific expertise in financial literacy, culinary training, construction trades, technology, and other areas who want to come in and teach classes. The department facilitates the process.
The Community Reentry Center program. As described in detail in the previous episode with Dwayne Sessions, IDOC operates community reentry centers where people in the final stretch of their sentences go out to work during the day and return in the evening. These participants are already working in IDOC kitchens, learning food safety protocols and cooking at scale. They’re trained, motivated, and as Sessions has said repeatedly, often the most reliable employees a business will ever hire.
Transitional housing. IDOC funds a limited amount of transitional housing for people getting out, but it’s typically 30 to 60 days, not long enough to accumulate a rental deposit in a market where a modest Boise apartment starts at $1,500 a month. The department is actively looking for community providers willing to run clean, sober, and structured transitional housing. People willing to enter that space can make a material difference.
Simply hiring. The data is consistent: 85% of HR professionals and 81% of business leaders report that employees with criminal records perform the same or better than those without. The stigma attached to that checkbox on an application is not supported by the evidence.
The Unsung Heroes
Derrick closed with something that doesn’t get said often enough: corrections staff work in one of the most demanding environments in public service, often in aging facilities, with wages that don’t compete with the private sector, on shifts that require long commutes to facilities that weren’t built near population centers. IDOC came through COVID at nearly 35% vacancy for correctional officers. Through sustained cultural investment over about 18 months, they rebuilt that to under 10%, a result that peers around the country are still struggling to match.
“We might be the unsung heroes in the criminal justice system,” Derrick said. “We get this long period of time to really make an impact. And if somebody’s willing, we can reinforce that change, help them practice it safely with guardrails.”
That’s a different way to think about what corrections is and what it could be. And it’s the kind of reframe that makes second chance hiring not just a charitable act but a logical one, for businesses, for communities, and for the 97% of people in Idaho’s prisons who will eventually be our neighbors again.
Learn about volunteer opportunities through IDOC’s Free to Succeed mentoring program at idoc.idaho.gov. For information on the Community Reentry Center employer program, contact the Idaho Department of Corrections directly.
