Moving juveniles to Missoula studied to ease local jail crunch

An increasing number of serious felony offenders has created a shortage of jail space in Flathead County that is at crisis levels, so Sheriff Chuck Curry said he believes a short-term solution is to get rid of the county’s juvenile facility to make room for adults.

Curry will meet with county commissioners on Wednesday to present his proposal to do away with the Flathead County Juvenile Detention Center.

The meeting is at 10:30 a.m. at the Flathead County Courthouse.

“It’s not ideal,” Curry said. “I don’t know that there is an ideal solution, but it is kind of our only solution.”

A plan to purchase the vacant Walmart building in Evergreen and turn it into a jail facility fell through earlier this month when the county was outbid for the building.

Curry said outsourcing juvenile inmates to the Missoula Juvenile Detention Facility would free up 14 beds to take some pressure off the overcrowded adult jail across the street.

The current Flathead County Detention Center has an official capacity of 107 adult inmates. “At one time in the past couple of weeks we hit 120 inmates,” Curry said. “These are not inmates we can get out of jail. It’s not in the best interest of public safety of letting them out.”

Most of the time, between 80 and 90 percent of the jail population is charged with one or multiple felonies, twice what most jail populations should have, Curry said.

He said his staff has been weighing the option for a while.

“We can’t outsource the adults,” Curry said. “All the adult jails around are full.”

Curry said he understands that the distance might make it difficult for parents to visit their children in jail.

“I would point to two things,” Curry said. “One, we maybe won’t be housing as many kids and two, it’s not something we’ve looked at lightly. We’ve studied this for a while and right now, at this point it is my only viable alternative to crisis.”

Nick Nyman, chief probation officer for Flathead Youth Court Services, said that his office has been working with Curry to address changes that could result from juvenile outsourcing. The switch could happen as soon as Nov. 1 if approved by the county commissioners.

“We are making adjustments right now,” Nyman. “It is a lot of collaboration with the sheriff’s department, just making sure we have our bases covered. We’re working through it. I don’t see it as a major issue.”

Nyman said he believes the plan might benefit youths, because in lieu of making a trip to Missoula, it will be more likely that officials would try to get youths into the local shelter or into the care of other community resources that are better equipped to deal with underlying issues than the jail system.

“I think the impact is having to access different community resource alternatives, but it could be a positive thing,” Nyman said.

Some people are still uncertain about the plan’s viability. Michael Renaud, a longtime literacy volunteer for the juvenile facility, said he planned to attend the commissioners’ meeting to ask some questions about the proposal.

“There is an established program and an experienced staff doing a job now, and is it worth dismantling that in order to gain a few beds for the overflow?” Renaud asked. “Is this a stopgap measure? We also need to consider the cost of what refurbishing the facility for adult’s is. Is this plan the best thing to do?”

Curry said he anticipated cost of transitioning would be very minimal.

Reporter Megan Strickland may be reached at 758-4459 or by email at mstrickland@dailyinterlake.com