Needed to combat crime: jail space, treatment

Leaders in the local criminal justice system seemed to agree at a Thursday night panel that more county jail space and increased access to local drug treatment are the best ways to combat crime in the community.

The Glacier Country Pachyderm Club hosted a panel of leaders as the culmination of a three-month series on public safety in the Flathead Valley.

The panelists included leaders in local law enforcement, a drug treatment provider, public defender, two county attorneys and a school superintendent.

Flathead District Court Judge David Ortley said that he was glad the group had opened the issue up to the public, because while those who work in the system have had discussions about how to improve it since the early 1990s, nothing is likely to change unless there is a major push from taxpayers.

“It affects all of us and it is something that as experts, if you will, in our field we can’t really do anything about,” Ortley said. “It is going to take a collaborative effort and it is going to take community support. Without community support nothing will happen and the last 25 years have shown that.”

Flathead County Sheriff Chuck Curry and Kalispell Police Chief Roger Nasset emphasized the role drugs are playing in the local crime scene.

“Heroin is creating a tremendous problem,” Nasset said, noting that the price of the drug has dropped 50 percent in the past year.

Those who get hooked on heroin often commit thefts and burglaries to support their habits. They often neglect their children and generate cases for Child Protective Services and are more likely to have mental health problems.

Nasset said he does not think the number of criminal offenders has necessarily increased but rather a small number of individuals are committing more drug-fueled crimes over and over again.

Nasset and Curry said law enforcement got together and took the 12 worst drug and theft offenders off the streets three months ago and the number of thefts and burglary calls dropped 50 percent.

However, getting the bad guys off the street is easier said than done in some cases.

Curry pointed out that the Flathead County Detention Center typically has 90 percent felons in its cells, and while the sheriff makes a point of taking dangerous offenders no matter what, the space crunch in the jail has reached crisis levels as the population has swollen to 128 inmates in recent months. It was originally built to house 67 inmates.

A shortage of jail space is a major kink in the local system, Curry said.

“I think jail is truly the foundation for all the building blocks of the criminal justice system,” Curry said.

Curry said he is very supportive of treatment and alternatives to jail, but jail is an important tool in corrections, especially considering that 85 percent of admissions to the Montana State Prison have already been on probation or parole.

“What we are doing is not working,” Curry said.

Pathways Counselor Courtney Rudbach said she would like to see more people sent to treatment rather than jail or prison, but that there simply aren’t enough local resources.

“If everyone who had a problem got sentenced to treatment, there would be a six-month wait,” Rudbach said.

Rudbach and Curry agreed that there needs to be some element of hope in the form of treatment and a hammer in the form of jail to help offenders get their lives put back together.

Public defender Nick Aemisegger is an advocate for looking at alternatives to throwing people in jail. He pointed to Mecklenburg, North Carolina, where authorities were on the brink of building a new jail a decade ago because of overcrowding, but instead focused on a robust treatment program that ended up dropping the jail population almost in half.

“Treatment, treatment, treatment, that’s the first thing we need to do,” Aemisegger said.

The suggestions on how to tackle the crime issue are all under consideration, Flathead County Commissioner Pamela Holmquist said.

At the end of the county’s fiscal year in July, the county will have set aside $5 million that could be put toward remedying the problem, but there is not yet a clear path forward on how to proceed.

“We truly are looking at everything,” Holmquist said.

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