The Lewis and Clark County Sheriff’s office is having problems with overcrowding at the county jail.
At times, the jail contains nearly twice as many inmates as it was designed to hold.
A new facility may be the only option to fix the problem.
The Lewis and Clark County Detention Center opened in 1985. It’s designed to house 54 inmates. Yet the average is right around 76.
Montana always seems to be needing new jails, new prisons. This is what happens when you have a police state that causes such a high incarceration rate. 454+ incarcerated per 100,000. That is extremely high! When are they going to realize that they have been found out? That they are using this to make money?
Broadwater County thought they were so smart when they saved ear marks and built that jail. They had Gallatin County as prime customer with the judicial ménage a trios to keep it full. But then Gallatin County saw how much money they could make by keeping their own inmates and a few federal inmates and they built new jail. I told a business owner in Bozeman it would be like the field of dreams: “If you build it they will fill it”. There is no correlation anywhere that full jails make safer communities. It is like the cost of the private prison in Shelby. They claim to do it cheaper but the overall cost of keeping it full long after the inmate has served his time out weights the per day savings. You have to always remember the private prison is in it for the money. They have stockholders to satisfy and justice isn’t even a bi-product.