County detention center fills up for holiday weekend

Following the first big holiday weekend of the spring, the Flathead County Detention Center nearly reached capacity.

It’s a situation that happens from time to time in the 1985 facility that was originally built to house 63 inmates and now can go up to 92 before a judge’s OK is needed to house any more.

On Tuesday morning, 91 people were calling it their temporary home. A day later that number was down to 82.

“Obviously the Tuesday after a long Memorial Day weekend it’s going to be full, but we were relatively full going into the weekend,” Flathead County Sheriff Chuck Curry said.

Curry said that while there is no accurate way to predict exactly when the jail is going to be full or not, there is a bit of a cycle. The inmate population tends to be up in the spring, he said, down a little in the middle of the summer and filling up again around the winter holiday season.

During a recent tour of the jail given to students in the Sheriff’s Citizens’ Academy, Chief Detention Officer Bill Smith said when the jail population hits 92, they start restricting who they accept on misdemeanor charges. He did note, however, they will always take people on felony charges, for drunk driving or for violent crimes.

Curry said dealing with a high jail population is just a matter of prioritizing.

“We certainly will never turn away someone who needs to be in jail for the public’s protection,” Curry said, later explaining, “If we’re full of felons or violent offenders, we may turn away someone who’s here to do their weekend for the DUI they got six weeks ago and ask them to come back when our population is down.”

According to Smith, even if the jail is bursting at the seams on sheer numbers, it may not be a difficult situation to handle. On the flip side, he said managing the jail can be challenging with numbers well below the limit depending on the type of people incarcerated.

“It can be overcrowded at 79 to 80 and be OK at 102,” Smith said.

The highest amount of inmates he had ever seen at one time was 102. Curry said he has not seen the jail population rise past 92 in his time as sheriff.

The jail has a total staff of 32, including two nurses, an office tech and 29 detention officers. Normal staffing consists of 12 people during the day shift and five at night.

An up-to-date list of inmates and their charges can be found online at apps.flathead.mt.gov/jailroster.