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…