Utah spent $1 billion to build a new prison. Now, lawmakers want $130 million more.

In the summer of 2022, Utah leaders unveiled the new Utah State Correctional Facility. It was the largest construction project in state history and cost taxpayers more than $1 billion.

Less than four years later, lawmakers want $130 million in additional funds to expand the state’s prison capacity, but the proposal is raising concerns among some advocates and attorneys, particularly given what lawmakers are calling a tight budget year.

Despite the recent massive investment in Utah’s prison system, Rep. Karianne Lisonbee, R-Clearfield, is sponsoring the $130 million appropriations request to pay for 768 new prison beds, which she says is necessary given the state’s population growth in recent years and vital to avoid the emergency release of some incarcerated people.

“Several forecasts … show that we will reach capacity in the next few years,” Lisonbee said during a recent appropriations hearing. “That’s troublesome,” she said, because it will be two to three years to get the expansion built. “So we are at a critical point right now.”

The Utah Department of Corrections declined to comment on the request for appropriations and directed all inquiries to lawmakers.

In an interview, Lisonbee said the request for funding came out of a working group that met between legislative sessions. The initial plan, she said, was to request $200 million for the expansion, and the group worked to get the ask down to $130 million. Lawmakers will officially approve or deny the appropriations request in the coming weeks, as the year’s budget is finalized near the end of the annual legislative session.

Despite the slimmed-down request, the proposal has raised eyebrows in a tight budget year, as state leaders have asked agencies — including the Department of Corrections — to cut 5% from their budgets and have repeatedly said many requests for funding will have to be denied.

“If the state, if the governor, is asking for these cuts across the board, then how are they going to care for the people that they want to build more prisons for?” Utah Prisoner Advocate Network co-founder Molly Prince said. “To me, it doesn’t make sense.”

For Prince and others with UPAN, a nonprofit that advocates for better conditions for inmates and works to support the families of incarcerated people, the idea of $130 million spent on beds alone is concerning.

Instead, they would like to see the Legislature spend to improve health care for people incarcerated in state prisons, provide additional therapists and mental health support, pay for substance abuse treatment and offer educational opportunities and supplies, among other things.

“The more meaningful, positive things [there are] for incarcerated people to do, the safer it is for the staff, for the correctional officers on the housing units, for the therapists, the case managers, the volunteers that run treatment programs [and] the facilitators of some of those classes,” Prince said. “Advocates want the staff to be safe, too.”

Prince also raised concerns about whether the request for appropriations would cover the need to hire additional staff, but in an interview, Lisonbee said it does not.

And asked about the concerns advocates raise about funding for rehabilitation programs instead of, or in addition to, prison expansion, Lisonbee said that is a separate issue and the Legislature’s work on additional services “has been ongoing.”

‘The normal way we do business’

Despite the tight budget, the expansion proposal seems to have the backing of legislative leadership, including Senate President J. Stuart Adams, R-Layton, who suggested during a recent news conference that the state may go so far as to take out bonds to pay for the expansion.

And Sen. Jerry Stevenson, R-Layton, who serves as the Senate’s executive appropriations chair, said, “We are a state that has very, very low debt, and if we need to bond to build a prison cell, that’s maybe what we’ll have to do.”

According to a Department of Corrections spokesperson, the corrections population in Utah currently stood at about 6,480 as of late January. That included 1,725 men at the Central Utah Correctional Facility, 2,759 men and 362 women at the Utah State Correctional Facility and 1,634 people in county jails.

Utah’s prison population goes up on average 1.8% per year, according to the Utah Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice. The commission estimates that the state’s male prison population will reach maximum operational capacity by the first quarter of 2029, and emergency capacity — meaning some offenders would have to be released to make room — by the fourth quarter of 2029.

Stevenson also argues that the need for expansion so soon after the new prison was completed is the result of the state’s population having grown beyond initial estimates made when planning for the prison began.

“We have more people that need to be incarcerated, and as a result, we need more space for them,” Stevenson said. “That’s why we bought as much ground out there as we did buy, so that we could add on when we needed to.”

“Now, has the time come more quickly than we thought?” Stevenson added. “That’s possible, but I will say … this is now the normal way we do business in the state of Utah.”

Years of increased penalties

The push for expansion also comes after years of increased criminal penalties passed by Utah lawmakers. According to an analysis done by the Utah Defense Attorney Association, in 2023, the Legislature passed 27 bills increasing, expanding or creating new criminal offenses. In 2024, they passed 36 bills increasing criminal penalties, and in 2025 they passed 50.

“When you increase penalties … there are anticipated consequences of that type of legislation,” Mark Moffat, a leader of the Utah Defense Attorney Association, said during an interview. “One of the anticipated consequences is that more people are going to go to prison, are going to go to prison for longer, and that puts a strain on the Department of Corrections.”

Moffat said that, as a defense attorney, he thinks prison time can be an important tool of accountability.

“We are not against prison sentences,” he said. “We know for a fact that for some of the people that we represent, prison is an absolutely appropriate place.”

But he is not convinced that the increased penalties and expanded prison capacity are the only way to address concerns about crime.

“We would hope that people would look at alternatives to incarceration as a means of addressing some of the problems there,” he said. “We would hope that some of that money could be spent in ways other than locking people up.”

Lisonbee, meanwhile, argued during her presentation that expanding capacity will actually reduce recidivism rates.

“We have to have proper prison capacity to address the issues,” she said. “All of that creates that puzzle and the need to really expand the prison right now, get shovels in the ground, so that we can have those extra beds when you need them.”

The lawmaker pointed to a recent audit from the state legislative auditor that found recidivism rates went up when incarcerated people are released due to overcrowding. While some studies have shown that better prison conditions, including less crowded facilities, can reduce reoffending, others have shown that simply expanding prisons and reducing density alone has no impact on recidivism rates.

Addressing infrastructure issues in prison facilities is important, UPAN communications director Shane Severson said, but he is concerned that the expansion will encourage the Legislature to continue the trend of increasing penalties and putting more Utahns behind bars.

“If you build more beds, you’re incentivized to build to fill those beds,” he said. “Being punitive is easy, but fixing societal problems is hard.”