On the Record: Cascade County Sheriff Jesse Slaughter

On the Record delivers insights and opinions from Montana’s most influential newsmakers and experts in conversation with the reporters and editors of Montana Free Press.

Cascade County Sheriff Jesse Slaughter will enter the general election unopposed — his second straight as the lone candidate. He oversees a county jail under contract to hold immigration detainees, a practice that contributes to a revenue model Slaughter has said he wants to change.

In this interview with Montana Free Press, Slaughter talks about that revenue model, shares his views on immigration enforcement and describes the limits he places on a school resource officer program that he has advocated for in Great Falls and around Cascade County.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Matt Hudson: We’ve talked before about the balance of factors in the revenue model at the jail. Could you just summarize that dynamic for me?

Jesse Slaughter: One of the issues we’re running into now is the expenses that jails are having to incur are so massive, it’s starting to outpace our revenue system. So, an example of that is that it’s approximately $4 million a year for what we get in taxpayer money. The rest I’m required to come up with to meet that budget. And that’s just to meet my budget. And that’s $9 million to $10 million dollars a year, depending on the year. So a huge percentage, two-thirds, of my budget has to be generated by selling beds to [jurisdictions that] oftentimes are out of county, sometimes even out of state, to fill the jail.

The reason I need that is because I have to keep the lights on in the building. The staffing costs, which are always your biggest costs. Your medical services costs, which are huge. And your food service costs, which are huge as well. So, that’s the challenge.

I think as we move into the future, you know, we have to work with our county commissioners and our citizens, and there’s going to come a day when we have to get out of this revenue-based model of jail, because if we don’t, we have no scale. We don’t have the ability to scale, because again, most of your beds are taken up by revenue, and you don’t have the ability to take on the people [arrested locally] that need to be incarcerated, right?

We just completed our recent inmate reduction, which was really, really difficult to do, and we had to be very thoughtful about how we did it. But even at the numbers we sit at today, which I think this morning we were at 293 [inmates], which is the record low ever since — I think you have to go back to probably like 2010 before, maybe even before that, 2007 — before we’ve seen numbers this low.

But even then, it hasn’t really changed our cost. We’ve had to do it because we’ve had a staffing shortage, so we didn’t have a choice, but it really doesn’t change your bottom-line cost. And that’s because the revenue-based model, the way it’s designed, you have to have the revenues to do that.

So, moving forward, I don’t know what the answer is. I don’t know if the answer is that we have to ask the public to levy the money to be able to become a fully funded, sustained county jail, so we’re not dependent on the revenue. 

We will always have the revenue. We’ll always have a federal courthouse here, so we’ll always have to house pre-adjudicated federal inmates. But we’re holding a lot of those inmates that go to court in Missoula and Billings. Because Billings and Missoula don’t house as many. They house a very small fraction of what we house, and so they’re transported to Billings and Missoula to go to court.

Hudson: A big mix as of late of your federal inmates are the immigration holds. Enforcement from the federal side has really changed over the last two years, become more aggressive. I’m curious if your perspective on that enforcement has changed from a county sheriff and having to run a jail?

Slaughter: These immigration laws have existed for as long as I’ve probably been alive. They’re just being enforced now. I always find it funny that they were really not enforced for about a four-year period of time. And even then, they were enforced; they just were enforced on a very small scale. Now they’re being enforced at a large scale.

I think if we’re going to be a country that has laws and follows the laws — I mean, these laws were set in place by our federal congressional representatives, and they are the law. Nothing has changed with the law. Historically, especially in the state of Montana, they typically only are going after the offenders who have committed crimes, local crimes. And they deem them to be a danger, so then they’re going to deport them. 

You will see a little bit of nuance with that at the border with [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] and Border Patrol arrests. But their hands are also tied, too, because if you come into this country, and you’re illegal when you come in through the port, they by law have to deal with that. 

For example, right now, I believe we have 10 immigration holds in our jail, and I believe every single one of them has a pretty significant local crime attached to them. Partner family member assault, child endangerment, just a couple off the top of my head that I can think of that they have committed. A lot of aggravated DUIs. But those are public safety risks to our community. And they go on immigration status to be deported.

I think the challenge that a lot of people face is, what if they’re just here, and the only thing they did wrong was they’re here illegally or their visa expired or whatever. And I can empathize with that, but the law is the law. I think one of the problems that our country is facing is how difficult a process it is to become a U.S. citizen. And how much money it costs.

I think the responsible thing we need to look at is: How do we make that path to being a citizen more realistic for people?

Hudson: If I can follow up on that, the criminal arrest and the arrests and the immigration arrests on the criminal side are one thing, but we just had dozens of releases from your jail that were civil holds that [U.S. District Court] Judge [Brian] Morris downtown said were improper arrests and improper detentions. That’s a little different from an immigration arrest with a criminal record or something like that.

Slaughter: I think that that narrative is shared with a lot of people. My problem with the people who come into our country illegally is sometimes the time it takes from the time they are detained, seen by the judge, and then they get their process adjudicated — whether that’s you can stay in the country or whether that’s you’re going to be deported — can take years. And then we haven’t accounted for those individuals and what they are doing in our country during that time.

And I’m not saying they’re doing anything nefarious. That’s not what I’m saying. But there has to be some mechanism to make a decision. And I also look at it from the humanitarian side. For those individuals who do come into our country and they get told, “Hey, you’re here illegally. You have a court date,” and it’s set way out. They get to live with that anxiety of wondering when the other shoe is going to drop and they’re going to get deported. Is that when they have established their life and their business and everything here, and they’re set up, and they’re doing well. And then all of a sudden it’s like, nope, not happening. You’re getting deported. 

So, I can see that. I also have personally seen the other side of it. And there are people out there that are taking advantage of these individuals, whether that be through labor trafficking, whether that be through sex trafficking, human trafficking and human smuggling in general. Those individuals who are here under an illegal status are very vulnerable to manipulation, not from law enforcement but from criminal organizations. 

Hudson: You’re entering your third general election. Two of those have been unopposed, including this one. You dipped a toe into policy advocacy with the school resource officer [SRO] programs and the related legislation you’ve been advocating for. I’m curious what, if any, political aspirations you have?

Slaughter: I don’t understand why there’s politics in protecting children, and I don’t understand why it’s not a higher priority in our country. We see these horrible school violence incidents occur. They happened way before Columbine, but if you go back to 1999, that kind of starts to be the one where we have the 24-hour news cycle, and it’s talked about all the time, right? And it’s almost accepted now in our society that it will probably happen eventually. And I’m like, no, we in law enforcement have to make sure it never happens. We have to be proactive.

To answer your question, what are my future political aspirations? Probably none. I don’t want to ever say never because my faith is my guiding kind of force in things. I really enjoy being present in the job of sheriff. I really enjoy it. I’ve had conversations with people who have asked me about other positions and things. And not very many of them are even half as appealing as doing what I’m doing right now. 

I just enjoy it because a sheriff is so closely connected to the citizens in their community. And it’s a lot more humble a position than some of the positions. But the amount of policy and influence that you can have as a sheriff if you do the job correctly — it’s profound. And a lot of these other political positions, there’s a lot of bureaucracy. And, you know, there’s a lot of political jockeying and things that you have to do to have influence.

In the position of sheriff, which I feel really blessed to be in, those things exist. But not to the level of some of these other political positions. The other thing I would also add to that is my family life is more important than my work life. And this is an extremely busy job. This job takes a lot of time away from home and personal life. But doing my due diligence and research into some of these other political jobs, it’s vastly more.

I’m local here in the community where I’ve set up my roots and where I live, and my family’s all here. My kids are all here. And going to my kids’ sporting events and being present for my family far outweighs any political aspiration that I would have.

Hudson: I should probably backtrack on the SRO thing. I think it does face opposition, as some people feel that more law enforcement presence in schools is negative and may contribute to a poorer environment. I guess I would ask you to respond to that viewpoint.

Slaughter: It depends on how you do it. Our school resource program is fully funded by the sheriff’s office budget. There’s no school that gives us money and pays percentages of my guys’ salaries or anything. Now that’s a very commonplace model. I’m not disparaging that model. Everyone’s budgets are tight. Everyone’s got to find a way to make it work, right? But one of the reasons that I like that it’s funded by us is that I have the ultimate say in how we do that.

There was a narrative a few years ago. It was called the school resource officer is the pipeline to prison. I think the mistake made there is when the school resource officer becomes so entangled in school administration, and they’re getting involved in counseling students or dealing with students on school policy. Violations of what they’re allowed to do in school. It’s not a violation of the law. It’s just a violation of school policy. 

I think that’s where it becomes a slippery slope and becomes very problematic. We are more community- and network-building when we’re in the schools. And I’m not saying the other SRO programs don’t do this, because they do. But on any given day, you know, my deputies are playing basketball at the school with the kids. They’re often helping them with problems that they have at home, whether it be abuse, neglect. Hasn’t risen to a criminal level yet, but they go to a law enforcement officer because they feel safe. They go to a deputy.

We have a very strict policy. We stay out of school policy. If school policy needs to be enforced, we draw a very straight line on that. And the school officials have to deal with that. They have to deal with that discipline. I don’t even want my deputies in the room when a principal, a superintendent, associate principal is handing down something to a student for some school policy. 

Now, if they violate a state law, they break the law, our deputies assigned to the schools will deal with that. They’ll handle that and deal with it appropriately.

And our deputies are also encouraged to not enforce that law unless it’s absolutely necessary. We have to remember these are juvenile kids. They’re going to break the law, have no idea what they did, and it’s a learning opportunity. So we encourage them, unless it’s absolutely necessary, unless people are endangered and it’s going to cause a problem, to educate them and mentor them and steer them in the right direction before we get to writing tickets and making arrests. A lot of our deputies in our school resource officer program are calling in the parents and having a meeting. 

The biggest deterrent to violence is knowing that there is a person who is armed and trained in that school. And then if you go in to do something bad, whatever violence you intend to inflict on those children, you’re going to get inflicted back on you. That’s the ultimate deterrent. 

All these other things are great. The way they’ve secured schools now, the buzzer doors, all those things should have been done decades ago just to make sure that schools were safe places.

It’s a challenge, though, and it’s a change, and it’s sad that we have to even be having this conversation. In a perfect world, I don’t want any of this.

But I agree with where your question is going. There is a line we cannot cross where we start to become so familiar with these kids and their bad behavior that we, as law enforcement, before they ever become adults, label them as a bad person. And then that stays with them for their entire life.

We’re very intentional about not doing that. I think the other programs out there that are intermixed a little bit more, I know they do make all the efforts to be intentional with it, but at the end of the day, they truly serve two masters. They serve their law enforcement leaders, and they also serve the school officials. We’re just law enforcement. That’s our role. 

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