Firm plans bid for pre-release center

A Missoula inmate corrections firm dipped its toe into Kalispell on Tuesday to gauge the temperature for a potential halfway house.

The Montana Department of Corrections is considering setting up a pre-release center in the Kalispell area.

And Missoula Correction Services - a private nonprofit firm that runs a similar center in Missoula - met Tuesday with local government, legal and law enforcement leaders to get a feel for the community.

Missoula Correction Services expects to bid to operate such a facility if the state decides to put one in the Flathead.

The state hopes to have a request for proposals out by the end of this year, with no timetable set beyond that.

A pre-release center holds prison inmates who are near the ends of their sentences. The concept is for them to hold jobs and gradually re-enter the outside world in their home areas under strict supervision.

Such centers exist in Missoula, Great Falls, Helena, Butte, Bozeman and Billings. None exist in Northwest Montana, which is why one is on the drawing board for the Flathead, Bob Anez, a state corrections department spokesman, said in a phone interview.

Missoula Correction Services operates only in Missoula.

The idea is for Northwest Montana inmates to go through a halfway house where they have family, friends and employers for support. The concept assumes that released inmates will return to their home towns regardless if they go through a halfway house or not.

Flathead County is the state's third-largest contributor to Montana's prisons, Kerry Pribnow, the state's contract manager for the pre-release program, said in a phone interview. The county has 1,200 to 1,400 offenders in the system, with roughly 800 on probation or parole.

No figures exist on how many of a pre-release center's residents eventually return to crime.

This year, the Legislature appropriated $1.9 million for a potential Flathead project.

The state is considering one option of putting a 40-bed facility in Flathead County with Kalispell being the most likely spot - along with a 20-bed facility for American Indians on the Flathead Reservation. The centers would not have bars or fences.

Sue Wilkins, executive director of Missoula Correction Services, speculated that a potential 40-bed Flathead facility could later be expanded to 80 beds.

Pribnow said five of the six other pre-release centers have been expanded. The exception is the Bozeman site, which is new.

The 40,000-square-foot, 110-bed Missoula Correction Services site employs 56 people.

In fiscal:

. 2002-03, it held 185 inmates. Forty-eight were sent back to prison. One escaped. Two finished their sentences. The rest moved on to the suspended or parole segments of their sentences.

. 2003-04, it held 266 inmates. Fifty-two were sent back to prison. Three escaped. Seven finished their sentences. The rest moved to the suspended or parole segments of their sentences.

. 2004-05, it held 288 inmates. Forty-seven were sent back to prison. One escaped. Fourteen finished their sentences. The rest moved to the suspended or parole segments of their sentences.

. 2005-06, it held 269 inmates. Thirty-nine were sent back to prison. Two escaped. Ten finished their sentences. The rest moved to the suspended or parole segments of their sentences.

A committee of state, local and center representatives screen inmates for a pre-release facility. Some communities have forbidden sex offenders at their centers.

"I've heard very clearly from this community that sex offenders would not be accepted," Wilkins said.

All center residents must have jobs, with the facility helping them obtain work. Pribnow said employers like pre-release workers because the state supervises their attendance and reliability.

The center's inmates would be charged $12 a day of their own money to live in the facility, which would include a kitchen, drug tests and counseling, Wilkins said.

The state prefers that the centers be in cities because the inmates are not allowed vehicles and must be able to make it to work.

"It has to be in the community. It can't be isolated because they're working in the community," Flathead County District Judge Ted O. Lympus said at Tuesday's meeting.

Inmates are heavily scheduled - including when they can be inside and outside the center - with security officers checking on them, Wilkins said. She said Missoula Correction Services is tough about sending inmates back to prison if they violate rules.

Missoula Correction Services has not yet located a Flathead site to put in its bid for the contract.

Wilkins and several of the 16 local leaders at Tuesday's meetings assumed that a town will accept a pre-release center until an actual site is selected. Then they expected the selected neighborhood to oppose such a center in its midst.

Lympus said: "This sounds like something people would support, unless they found it in their neighborhood. … It's something that we would have to sell."

Reporter John Stang may be reached at 758-4429 or by e-mail at jstang@dailyinterlake.com