Marc A. Levin, Esq., and Khalil Cumberbatch co-lead the Centering Justice Initiative at the Council on Criminal Justice, where Levin is Chief Policy Counsel and Cumberbatch is Director of Engagement and Partnerships. They can be reached at mlevin@counciloncj.org and khalil@counciloncj.org.
Iowa has built something worth protecting on public safety. Its violent crime rate is roughly a quarter below the national average, overall crime has been declining for years, and the state’s recidivism rate has fallen to a ten-year low of about 33 percent, down from 39 percent in 2019. Iowa has done all of this while locking up its residents at a rate nearly a quarter below the national norm. That combination — better outcomes, fewer people behind bars — is exactly what evidence-based criminal justice policy is supposed to look like.
Governor Kim Reynolds has until June 2 to decide whether to sign House File 2542, a three-strikes mandatory sentencing measure rushed through in the final hours of the 2026 legislative session. She should look hard at what it will actually cost — and what Iowa already has to lose.
Current Iowa law designates anyone with three felony convictions a “habitual offender,” subject to a three-year minimum sentence — one that judges can defer or suspend when the circumstances call for it. House File 2542 discards that flexibility entirely, mandating a seven-year minimum with zero deferral option. Judges would lose the authority to distinguish a genuine career criminal from someone whose third conviction — for theft, crop damage, or another nonviolent offense — does not pose the same threat to public safety.
The bill’s reach is broader than its proponents have suggested. It covers every felony without exception. House members considered an amendment requiring the final strike to be a forcible felony, but Republicans defeated that amendment when the bill was first debated in March.
Iowa’s habitual offender statute has never included a time limit on prior convictions, and this bill does nothing to change that. A 55-year-old Iowan with two low-level felonies from age 18 or 19 who commits a third nonviolent offense today faces mandatory incarceration until age 62, with no judge empowered to consider the decades of law-abiding life between then and now.
The fiscal picture is stark — and was largely hidden from lawmakers when they voted. When the House passed an earlier version of the bill, the nonpartican Legislative Services Agency had not received the data it needed from the Department of Corrections to complete a cost estimate. The legislature voted anyway. The final fiscal note was issued May 20, after the state agency provided updated numbers to reflect the revised bill both chambers approved on May 2.
The fiscal note projects Iowa’s prison population will grow by 4,363 people — a 49.2 percent increase — by fiscal year 2030. Accommodating that growth will require an estimated $1.97 billion in one-time construction costs and $115.6 million in new annual operating expenditures. Iowa’s prisons are already 26.9 percent over capacity with 121 correctional officer positions sitting vacant today.
The evidence on mandatory minimums is consistent and has been for decades. A Council on Criminal Justice task force co-chaired by two former federal prosecutors reviewed the research and concluded that broad mandatory minimums are ineffective, unnecessary, and bad policy — and called for redirecting those resources toward law enforcement and prevention. The underlying reason is simple: what deters crime is the likelihood of getting caught, not the length of the sentence. Many people who commit offenses aren’t calculating prison terms — they either act on impulse or believe they won’t be apprehended.
Utah chose a different approach this session. Rather than extend sentences, the state passed legislation funding a grant program to put more homicide detectives on the street, strengthen forensic capabilities, and drive up case clearance rates — investing in the front end of the justice system where the deterrent effect actually lives.
Iowa lawmakers rewrote this bill overnight at session’s end, without a completed cost analysis, and sent it to the governor’s desk. The final accounting — nearly $2 billion to build prisons Iowa doesn’t have the staff to run, $115.6 million a year to operate them, all piled onto a correctional system already straining past its limits — is not what serious public safety policy looks like. Iowa has earned its strong crime numbers the right way. This bill puts that record at risk without any credible evidence it will make deliver a meaningful return on taxpayers’ massive investment.