Montana Prisons Still Overcrowded After Arizona Inmate Transfer
The state inked a deal to transfer 120 inmates to a private prison facility in Arizona last year, but that still left hundreds in county jail awaiting placement in state-run prisons
by Arren Kimbel-Sannit for Montana Free Press
Overcrowding at state prison and county jail facilities in Montana continues to be a problem despite the state’s recent transfer of 120 inmates to a private prison in Arizona, officials with the Montana Department of Corrections told lawmakers Tuesday.
The transfer of 120 male inmates to CoreCivic’s Saguaro Correctional Center in Eloy, Arizona last year — the result of an almost $4 million annual appropriation that Republican lawmakers slipped into a prison infrastructure bill in the latter days of the 2023 Legislature — did allow for 212 state inmates previously housed in county jails to be placed at the Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge, Department of Corrections Director Brian Gootkin said Tuesday.
But, according to department data, about 345 state inmates are still being held in county facilities while they await placement elsewhere, including 103 who are in jail pending free space at the state prison.
“[The transfer] absolutely did help, however we’re so far behind that it didn’t fix it,” Gootkin said at a meeting of the Legislature’s Law and Justice Interim Committee.
As of Tuesday, the Montana State Prison has an inmate population of 1,562, almost 40 prisoners more than its operational capacity. The state’s contracted facilities, a CoreCivic prison in Shelby and the Dawson County Correctional Facility in Glendive, are both hovering around or over capacity as well, depending on the day.
What to do about overcrowding in Montana prisons — and more specifically, what to do about the hundreds of people held in county jail while they await a spot in prison or in the even more confined state psychiatric hospital at Warm Springs — was a major topic of discussion in the 2023 Legislature.
Some lawmakers who sat on the committee tasked with drawing up budgets for the state prison system suggested the state transfer a chunk of inmates to an Arizona facility run by CoreCivic, one of the country’s largest private prison operators. CoreCivic, the lawmakers said, had mentioned the possibility during a tour with lawmakers before the session began.
The transfer was designed to be a quick-if-incomplete solution to crowded prison conditions, proponents said. Opponents questioned the propriety of legislating an appropriation to a private corporation without a bidding process and, more broadly, expressed skepticism about expanding the state’s existing investment in private prisons, which, regardless of the issues at any individual facility, are controversial for their profit model. The Department of Corrections itself was lukewarm on the idea, suggesting instead that the state add additional facilities to its prison system.
Funding for the transfer was the subject of significant legislative wrangling but ultimately passed. The state inked a deal with CoreCivic in November and soon began transferring inmates to Arizona in shifts.
On Tuesday, Gootkin told lawmakers that the department endeavored to only transfer non-high security inmates who were not heavily reliant on existing programming or health services at the state prison.
Among the critics’ concerns about the transfer — aside from the fact that the inmates would be more than 1,000 miles away from their families and communities — was that the CoreCivic facility may not have the same level of rehabilitative services and programming that the state could offer at Deer Lodge. On Tuesday, Gootkin said that 70 of the 120 inmates sent to Arizona are participating in some kind of work assignment, education or re-entry programming.
Fitzpatrick(*) said in a phone interview Tuesday that he had been vacationing in Arizona and visited the Saguaro facility with two or three officials from the Montana Department of Corrections earlier this month.
He said he was happy with the transfer, and that the facility seemed impressively large and clean. Of the handful of Montana inmates he spoke to, Fitzpatrick said, the key complaint he heard was that the Arizona facility was more restrictive than in Deer Lodge; for example, when it came to when and where inmates could eat.
Fitzpatrick acknowledged that crowding persists in Montana facilities, but said he didn’t see the trend slowing down anytime soon. The Legislature also allocated funding for repairs at Deer Lodge that will free up bed space, but not for a few years, he said.
“The thing I do like about the CoreCivic deal is this facility is not at full capacity, and if we have to address that issue with another contract, it looks like that may be an option,” he said.
*Possibly Montana Senator Steve Fitzpatrick (R-Great Falls) - Montana Independent News A request to confirm the full name of the Fitzpatrick in the article has been emailed to the author.