Temporary jail solution nearly ready to begin

The Flathead County Detention Center will have more room for inmates at the end of the month after the longtime juvenile detention facility is converted to temporary housing for adult female inmates.

“We’ll start housing adults there in the end of December, first of January kind of time frame,” Flathead County Sheriff Chuck Curry said.

The Flathead County commissioners on Nov. 2 approved the temporary dismantling of the juvenile jail after Curry said that overcrowding in the main jail had reached crisis levels.

The jail staff has used portable bedding systems to increase capacity to 107 inmates, but in October, the jail population swelled to 117 on some days.

Around ninety percent of jail occupants are felony offenders and most are considered too great a threat to be released on bail, Curry said.

A plan to buy the old Walmart building in Evergreen fell through in September, and Curry said transitioning the juvenile facility to house adult beds was the only immediate solution available.

The former juvenile facility will house female inmates and free up around 12 beds in the main detention center.

Curry said that his office has been transporting juveniles in need of detention to a Missoula County facility for the past couple of weeks and that the transition has gone smoothly.

As predicted, the number of juvenile inmates has dropped from an average of four per day to two per day as law enforcement has tried to find alternatives to incarceration.

Juvenile Probation Officer Nick Nyman said that judges are more likely to use electronic monitoring or house arrest systems to keep youths in trouble under the thumb of the court without having to take them outside the community.

Judges still put utmost importance on protecting the community and will incarcerate a youth when necessary, Nyman said.

Nyman said the trickiest part of the process has been making sure there is communication between parents and jail staff about who will pick the child up from Missoula.

“Everyone is really contributing to making this work really well,” Nyman said. “It’s a really good collaboration with everyone.”

Nyman has had no complaints from parents about the new system. It is unclear how long the juveniles will be outsourced to Missoula or how much it will cost.

Curry had hoped to be able to negotiate a lower daily rate for housing juveniles, but the Missoula County commissioners rejected the deal, so Flathead County pays $225 per day per juvenile. The annual cost of outsourcing the juveniles is expected to be around $345,000, although that number could vary substantially based on the number of youths who actually enter the system.

“We’re still working on a long-term solution,” Curry said.

His office plans to apply for grant funding that might be used to assess the jail system situation.

Reporter Megan Strickland can be reached at 758-4459 or mstrickland@dailyinterlake.com.