Committee to be formed to consider pre-release center

City and county officials agreed Monday to form a working committee to consider the construction of a prison pre-release center near Kalispell.

The committee will determine whether there is sufficient public support for the project and, if so, where the facility should be placed.

Pre-release centers holds prison inmates nearing the end of their sentences. They are designed to help inmates hold jobs and gradually re-enter the community under strict supervision. Some offenders are sentenced directly to pre-release facilities.

The 12-member body will be appointed jointly by the Kalispell City Council and the Flathead County Board of Commissioners, who hope to have the committee seated by the middle of January.

The committee will be tasked with educating the public about the rationale for choosing Kalispell as the location for a pre-release center, the services that center will provide, and the process that will be used to screen offenders.

It will also conduct public hearings and oversee a comprehensive, statistically valid, and non-biased survey to determine the level of public support.

If the community endorses the project, the committee will be responsible for finding an acceptable site as the next step. If the committee finds insufficient public support, the project will be scrapped.

"We're not going to come into your community, your backyard, and shove it down your throats," Department of Corrections contracts manager Kerry Pribnow told government, law enforcement, and legal representatives.

The decision to form the committee was reached after about two dozen local leaders, who generally support the project, met Monday with officials from the Department of Corrections.

"It was conceptual, now it's real," Pribnow said. "We have the funding, we have the need, and now we want to go forward."

The state is proposing either a 40-bed men's facility or a 30-bed men's facility coupled with a 10-bed women's facility. The state hopes to take bids on both proposals as early as July 2008 and then choose whichever plan is most appropriate.

However, local officials warned Pribnow that the corrections department must choose a course of action before presenting the plan to the community or risk controversy after the fact.

The state legislature has already appropriated $1.9 million to operate the proposed facility for its first year.

Pre-release centers already exist in Missoula, Great Falls, Helena, Butte, Bozeman and Billings.

Flathead County has contributed 1,317 people to the state corrections system - the fourth highest of any county in Montana. Lake and Lincoln Counties contribute about another 650 offenders.

Because there is no pre-release center here, 86 offenders from this region have been sent to other centers across the state. Flathead County is the only large county without a pre-release facility.

According to Corrections officials, it's cheaper to house an inmate in a pre-release center than the state prison. And the alternative is to release offenders from prison directly into the community, where they will be minimally supervised by probation and parole officers carrying large caseloads.

There are more than 800 offenders on probation or parole in the Kalispell area, a figure Pribnow offered as proof that offenders do return home regardless of whether or not a pre-release center exists to ease them back into society.

Pribnow stressed that a Flathead County pre-release center wouldn't import offenders from other communities; it would handle offenders from the Flathead who are currently diverted to other centers. A local board would have the final decision in accepting or denying an offender's participation in the program.

Employers also benefit from having pre-release centers in their communities, Pribnow said. They provide workers who are required to show up sober for work and, as a result, can pay taxes, fines and restitution, child support and their own medical expenses.

The center would be managed by the state, but a private nonprofit group would be contracted to build and operate it. Missoula Correction Services, the firm that runs the Missoula pre-release center, is expected to bid on the project should it achieve community approval and has already met with local government, legal and law enforcement officials.

Reporter Nicholas Ledden can be reached at 758-4441 or by e-mail at nledden@dailyinterlake.com