Missoula County urges action as the state struggles with prison overcrowding

MISSOULA — Overcrowding in Montana’s prisons is leaving more state inmates waiting in county jails, and Missoula County officials are asking the state to take the inmates it’s responsible for or pay the county the full cost of holding them. 

Montana’s increasing population is straining its corrections facilities, according to estimates from the state Department of Corrections. As of Thursday, 452 state inmates were waiting in county jails across the state to be transferred to state custody, including addiction treatment settings, according to the department. That doesn’t include the dozens of sentenced inmates waiting for a bed at the Montana State Hospital in Warm Springs, the state’s psychiatric facility. Missoula County had 35 state inmates, plus five waiting for a bed at the state hospital, as of early September.

“In addition to the cost, I would recognize the fundamental injustice of holding sentenced inmates in our jail without them getting treatment for their mental health or substance abuse issues,” Missoula County Attorney Matt Jennings said during a county commission meeting Aug. 15. 

The Montana Department of Corrections is working on short- and long-term solutions to overcrowding, DOC Director Brian Gootkin wrote in an email to Montana Free Press. 

“Public safety is the department’s number-one priority regardless of Missoula County’s stance on reimbursement rates set by the Montana Legislature,” Gootkin said. “The department is in contact with its law enforcement partners and other stakeholders regularly as we work together to find solutions to state-wide capacity issues.”

As of July, an average of 86 people a month were awaiting placement at Montana State Hospital, according to a quarterly Department of Public Health and Human Services presentation. That figure represented an increase from prior months in 2024 and 2023 when the average monthly waitlist ranged from 65 to 75. 

A spokesperson for the state health department did not provide information about the counties in which waitlisted patients are currently being held or how many months each person has been delayed hospital services. Instead, the department directed MTFP to file a public records request for information.

In mid-August, the Missoula County commissioners approved a resolution stating that outside agencies are not allowed to hold inmates at the county’s detention center without the county’s prior consent when the agency does not reimburse Missoula County for the actual costs. The resolution also directs the sheriff and jail commander to minimize the holding of arrestees or offenders for outside agencies at a financial deficit. 

“I hope this serves as a wake-up call to our state agencies that they can’t just leave people in local jurisdictions; they have to accomplish these goals that have been ordered by the courts,” prosecutor Jennings said during the August meeting. 

The resolution doesn’t mean the county jail will release state inmates, but it does put the county’s policy position into writing and highlights the problems facing county jails, the DOC and the state hospital, Jennings said. 

The county’s statement follows a 2020 lawsuit it filed against the DOC seeking to reclaim “reasonable costs” of holding state inmates between 2015 and 2018.  

In 2015, the DOC agreed to pay Missoula County $88.73 per day for each inmate through January 2018. That spring, the Legislature capped the DOC reimbursement rate at $69 per day per inmate for the 2017 biennium. 

The Montana Supreme Court earlier this year ruled against the county’s claim to recover those costs but found the county is not required to house state inmates. 

In 2023, the Legislature raised the reimbursement rate to a minimum of $82 or 10% lower than the daily per-inmate rate for Crossroads Correctional Center in Shelby, whichever is higher. The increase falls short of Missoula County’s current daily cost per inmate of $125. 

The Department of Health and Human Services does not reimburse counties at all for the cost of holding inmates waiting for a bed at the Montana State Hospital. 

On Aug. 15, the Missoula jail held 31 DOC inmates for a cumulative 863 days, costing the county about $36,000 — the difference between the reimbursement and actual average daily cost, said Sheryl Ziegler, the jail’s commander. At the time, six sentenced inmates were waiting for a bed at the state hospital for a combined 715 days, costing nearly $90,000, she said. 

The county lost an estimated $310,500 in 2023 housing DOC inmates, according to the sheriff’s office, which oversees the jail.

The number of state inmates in Missoula County’s jail has increased, and many waiting for a hospital bed are staying for longer, Jennings said. On Aug. 22, 2023, the Missoula jail held 17 DOC inmates, about half the total around the same time this year. That doesn’t include inmates waiting for a hospital bed, which the county did not track separately until September 2023.

Jennings said one inmate currently housed by the county was originally arrested in August 2023. He was sentenced in March, roughly six months later, to the care of the state hospital but had yet to be transferred to the Warm Springs facility as of early September. 

In the last year, 14 inmates have spent a combined 1,836 days in Missoula’s jail waiting for a fitness evaluation, seven have spent 822 waiting for return to competency treatment and 13 have spent 1,268 days waiting for hospital treatment they’ve been sentenced to, according to the sheriff’s office. The county has lost about $158,500 holding these inmates.

Counties statewide are dealing with the same problem, with some more overcrowded than Missoula, Ziegler said. 

Missoula County Sheriff Jeremiah Petersen told the commissioners he recently attended a meeting with the DOC and other sheriffs to discuss the issue and “everyone is essentially fed up with it.” 

“They tried to lay out some things that they’re going to do moving forward, but we’re literally years out,” Petersen said. “Unfortunately, I think they just want to keep kicking the can down the road.”  

Some inmates wait in county jails for so long that they become eligible for parole or for conditional discharge and leave before they get any treatment, Jennings told the commissioners on Aug. 15.

Jail can exacerbate peoples’ mental health issues, and while the county provides some treatment to inmates, it isn’t set up to treat mental illness long-term, Jennings said. 

“DOC and DPHHS have turned our local jail into a functional prison. It’s a prison for addicts and the mentally ill,” he said. “It wasn’t designed for that, there isn’t staffing to accomplish it. At the moment of sentencing, these individuals become a state responsibility, for which all taxpayers across the state are supposed to be working on reducing the recidivism and rehabilitating the offenders. But instead, this has resulted in basically a shift of responsibilities back on to local governments instead of the state taking on the responsibility they are required to do so by law.” 

Jennings said DOC and the state hospital have options to increase capacity and deal with crowding. 

While Montana’s population is growing and the state needs some more prison beds, building new prisons isn’t necessarily the best option, Jennings told MTFP. Many incarcerated people have substance use and mental health problems, and the state needs more treatment facilities that address both together, he said. Funding an expansion of voluntary pre-trial treatment options at the county level would also help relieve pressure on the state system, Jennings said.

“DOC and DPHHS have turned our local jail into a functional prison. It’s a prison for addicts and the mentally ill. … It wasn’t designed for that, there isn’t staffing to accomplish it.”

Missoula County Attorney Matt Jennings

Gootkin, the department director, said the DOC is working “tirelessly” with community partners and legislative committees to expand capacity. 

A memo sent to Montana sheriffs in August outlined several measures DOC has taken or is exploring to address the growing prison population. 

Last month, the department contracted an additional 180 beds at the Saguaro Correctional Center in Arizona, bringing the total number of beds to 300. As of Thursday, 246 were filled. 

The department is also preparing to reopen the Montana State Prison’s 57-bed F Unit in about a month after it closed in 2022 because of critically low staffing levels, Gootkin said. 

The DOC is evaluating adding bunk beds to cells at the Pine Hills Correctional Facility for 22 additional adult beds and discussing doing the same at Crossroads Correctional Center, according to the memo. 

The department is also creating a screening process to determine whether inmates can be moved to community corrections within 14 months of parole eligibility, as allowed by the 2023 Legislature. 

In the last year and a half, the DOC and partners added 128 pre-release beds, Gootkin said. Next year, 68 male sex offender beds will be added at the Sanction, Treatment, Assessment, Revocation, and Transition Center in Warm Springs and 90 male pre-release beds are set to be ready in Kalispell. 

The DOC recently lost 144 beds at the Missoula Assessment and Sanction Center after contract negotiations broke down. The state contracted with the county to hold inmates at the center while they were screened for placement in DOC programs and facilities. 

The Legislature first capped the payment rate for regional facilities in 2017 and again in 2019 through 2021. For 2022 and 2023, Missoula County could submit a per diem calculation, which they did in 2024, said Carolynn Stocker, DOC communications director. 

The county and the DOC ended their contract in June, five years early, Jennings said. The department agreed to a two-month extension for more time to move inmates and paid the county two years for actual costs, he said. 

“That has greatly helped the cost disparity for the last two years but does not erase the years before where Missoula County was not fully reimbursed,” Jennings said. “DOC was welcome to continue using the MASC facility. Missoula County’s only demand is that they pay what it costs to run it. They said no and walked away.” 

The state paid Missoula County the 2021 rate of $93.72 until the county submitted the updated per diem rates of $114.82 for 2022 and $121.33 for 2023, Stocker said. 

Losing the Missoula facility contributed to the DOC contracting additional beds at the Saguaro Correctional Center, Gootkin told lawmakers during a committee meeting last week. The DOC pays CoreCivic, the company that owns the Arizona prison, $90 per day per inmate. Prisoners at Saguaro receive more inmate services than are available at the Missoula facility, Stocker said. 

While Missoula County officials are taking a firm position in the best interest of the county, they want to work cooperatively with state agencies, Jennings said.

“The sheriff and commissioners have not yet taken any other actions, though they are exploring their options with balancing public safety and making sure Missoula County taxpayers aren’t bearing a disproportionate burden for state responsibilities,” he said. “We know DOC is working on some ideas. We hope they are successful and that we don’t have to do anything else.”

Mara Silvers contributed reporting.

In-depth, independent reporting on the stories impacting your community from reporters who know your town.

REPORT AN ERROR

BEST PRACTICES

ABOUT MTFP