It's tough to find solutions for jail overcrowding

The Flathead County Detention Center population reached a record 126 inmates in February, a number that underscores the jail crowding crisis, local law enforcement officials say.

The record high is 27 people more than the 99 hard beds that the facility has and those who work in the county’s criminal justice system do not anticipate any immediate relief for the overcrowding.

A backlog in state correctional programming, increasing use of heroin and methamphetamine and lack of inpatient community drug treatment programs all are contributing to the problem.

The overcrowding also creates secondary concerns about inmates’ mental and physical well-being and has made it difficult for offenders to serve jail sentences for lesser misdemeanor offenses.

Flathead County Sheriff Chuck Curry is charged with running the facility. In late 2015 the Flathead County commissioners gave him the OK to outsource juvenile inmates to Missoula County to free up 14 jail beds in Kalispell. The county had already maxed out its space with portable beds to bring its capacity up to 107 inmates.

The detention center originally was built to hold 67 inmates.

The extra space has been helpful in a time of crisis, Curry said, but the jail keeps hitting new records. It’s gotten a little difficult to say what the jail’s maximum capacity actually is.

“Every time I say here’s our hard maximum number, we end up with more,” Curry said. “It’s our job to provide for public safety.”

Unfortunately, Curry said, most folks in the jail need to be there.

When the jail hit its most recent record, only seven of the 126 inmates were charged with misdemeanors, meaning 95 percent of the inmates were accused of felonies. According to Curry, in most county jail populations, 40 to 50 percent of inmates are charged with felonies.

“These are people that we can’t let out,” Curry said. “They are felons. We continue to do the best we can, but we’re full. I honestly don’t see that changing.”

To cope with the crowds, the jail has had to order more uniforms, toiletries and other supplies. At times the facility has run out of towels.

The county has explored several options to alleviate the problem, but nothing has come to fruition yet.

The county was outbid by another buyer last year for the former Walmart building in Evergreen. County officials had hoped to refurbish the old store into a jail. The county is still trying to negotiate, however, after the other deal fell through, Curry said.

In January a grant application to study the problem was denied. The county plans to reapply in the summer.

In the meantime, a complex set of situations is contributing to the problem.

“Honestly I think it’s a little bit of everybody in the system who has a hand in this,” Curry said. “There are lots of things that bog us down. Everyone has a right to their trial. There are complicating factors. You can’t just rush anyone through the system, but the system is slower and we constantly look at ways to problem-solve that.”

David Castro, regional Probation and Parole administrator for the state, said his office now has to factor in the jail’s population when it considers sanctioning probationers who misbehave. Before, probationers could be sent to jail for a couple of days as a wake-up call to get their act together, but in the current crisis that option isn’t always available.

“We are now being selective in usage of sanction because of space and ability,” Castro said.

Castro’s office works with offenders from the day they are convicted until the day they discharge their sentences. The first part of the process includes reporting to the office of Probation and Parole immediately after sentencing for a presentence investigation required by state law.

If the convict follows instructions, it takes around six weeks for the reports to be completed. However, sometimes they do not. Sometimes people are released to report to Castro’s office for the presentence investigation and they don’t ever show up or skip out on sentencing. In those cases a warrant has to be issued, and if the person never showed up to the probation office in the first place, it can take another six weeks in jail before a person is sentenced.

 Another common delay in imposition of sentence is lack of a sex offender evaluation. The evaluations are required by state statute for certain sex-related offenses and must be completed before the presentence investigation can proceed.

The nearest qualified evaluators are in Lincoln and Missoula counties, and there is often a backlog.

“There’s only a certain number of providers in the area that do the evaluations,” Castro said. “Sometimes they are not getting that done in a timely manner. Without that we cannot move forward.”

In other rare cases, people fall through the cracks.

On Feb. 18, Joseph DeVera was set to be sentenced for felony theft. But when DeVera was brought up from the jail to the courtroom, he said he had not received a form for his presentence investigation until his attorney brought him one a week previously.

It was unclear how DeVera’s case had been missed. Sentencing was moved to March 10.

“This is not OK,” District Judge Robert Allison said of the sentencing delay, one of a handful of cases that got postponed that day for various reasons.

Once the offenders do get sentenced, there is no guarantee they won’t sit in the Flathead County Detention Center for days, weeks or months before being moved to their next destination.

Probationers are screened for placement in appropriate treatment facilities, Castro said, but most of those treatment facilities are also facing a backlog.

“There’s only a certain amount of bed space available,” Castro said.

On Feb. 17, 15 of the 109 inmates in jail had been sentenced but were awaiting transport to state facilities. State law does not allow for release until program space opens up.

“The prison is full, they can’t wait there,” Castro said. “Our holding facilities are full and our programming is full.”

While the wait is frustrating, Castro said it is often better to send a person to treatment to get help than to leave them without help.

“We’re trying to get them into the assistance that would be beneficial for them to return to society,” Castro said.

Women are often the ones left waiting longest for treatment.

“The wait for the female-specific programs is now twice what it is for the males, which could be months,” Castro said.

Flathead County Detention Center Commander Jennifer Root said the jail at one point last month had 30 female inmates, which is as high as she has ever seen. In 2015 the jail averaged 18 women inmates per day, and the year’s record number of female inmates was 26.

“It just seems like it’s been more females, and they are waiting longer,” Root said.

The result Root has seen from the high population is that very few people are able to serve time for misdemeanors. Almost daily her office turns away people who have been sentenced to jail for misdemeanor crimes and come to turn themselves in — but can’t do their time because there isn’t any space. The jail sends the court a note saying that the person at least tried to do the time. Jail staffers also often turn away officers who bring people in on misdemeanor warrants.

People have caught onto the fact that they aren’t likely to serve time for petty crime, Root said.

“There is no deterrent for misdemeanor crimes,” Root said. “So these people are still out there committing misdemeanor theft and other crimes, and they keep continually committing crimes until it’s a felony.”

For a while, the jail tried to let out lower-level felony offenders, but often they would get out only to return in a few days. In one case, one man released on Friday was booked back into jail on Monday for stealing three cars over the weekend.

“We are no longer asking for people being released,” Root said.

Kalispell resident Valori Vidulich agrees that there is little deterrent for crime after she became a victim herself.

She got a text from her credit card company on Jan. 28, asking if she had made $3,155.19 worth of purchases. Vidulich had paid off the card the previous August, but soon found through some footwork that a criminal had visited car washes, gas stations, McDonald’s, Walmart, Lowe’s, K-Mart and other stores in a six-hour time frame to rack up the fraudulent charges.

She had the original card, but someone had made a fake copy. Vidulich found that the alleged thief had given his name and email address to Autozone and found where First National Pawn had gotten a picture of him when he used a fake remake of her card. The worker called police when the 45-year-old male suspect came back to the store a week later.

The man was arrested on a misdemeanor $1,000 warrant for theft. The warrant was issued on Sept. 23, 2015. Even though stealing Vidulich’s card is a felony, the man is still walking free. Vidulich questioned the officer handling the case. “He said, ‘We had to let him go,’” Vidulich said. “‘We have no jail space.’ He said, ‘Valori, what you need to do is rally for more jail space, because we have nowhere to put him’ ... The police say their hands are tied. They have to let them go whether they catch him or not.”

Vidulich said she thinks more jail space is essential to prevent criminals from preying on people in the valley.

“The citizens of Flathead Valley are being victimized and the police in essence are being victimized as well because they are handcuffed,” Vidulich said. “How do we solve the problem of getting the criminals off the streets so the police can do their job, so the public can be safe and secure?”

While problems abound with the jail system, finding an appropriate solution is tough.

Root said people often ask her why the jail can’t just put inmates in tents like famous Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio does. Nasty Montana winters and state jail standards make that impossible, Root said.

“We legally just can’t do that,” Root said, adding that forcing the inmates to work or enter any sort of treatment also is not an option because the majority of the inmates in the jail have not been found guilty or sentenced.

Regional Chief Public Defender Nick Aemisegger doesn’t see more jail space as the obvious answer to the problem. He hopes that money can be allocated to tackle the problem at its roots.

Aemisegger said a major factor in the backlog is lack of an inpatient treatment facility for chemical dependency in the Flathead Valley. His office covers Flathead, Lake, Lincoln and Sanders counties for misdemeanor and felony cases. Much of the increase in jail population is a result of more heroin and methamphetamine coming into the valley, Aemisegger acknowledged.

But as the drug problem has grown, the options for treatment have not.

“It just boggles my mind that we are dealing with such a chronic problem in our community and there isn’t an inpatient treatment facility,” Aemisegger said. “I can’t stress enough the role I think that addiction plays in this process.”

Aemisegger worries that jail is often not the best place for his clients to wait for sentencing. Jails are already not an ideal home for people with mental health or health issues, but overcrowding often worsens those issues in his clients. Treatment options for indigent inmates are extremely limited since most state programs require a conviction and commitment to the Department of Corrections.

“It’s a very stressful environment,” Aemisegger said. “You just have people sitting and decompensating.”

Aemisegger also questions whether all of the felons in the jail are immediate threats to the community.

“A lot of the felonies we deal with are because they got picked up on bad checks,” Aemisegger said. “A lot of people write bad checks because they have a gambling addiction. That is a bad thing, but are they a danger to the community? Who among them really pose a threat to society?”

Judges used to be more lenient about letting people out for property and other nonviolent crimes, Aeimsegger said.

Defendants were released on their own recognizance to house arrest settings, where they were allowed to go only to work or school and straight home. The system worked, but when electronic monitoring systems became available, judges felt more comfortable putting the accused under electronic surveillance.

“Under house arrest, they aren’t going anywhere. They aren’t hurting anybody,” Aemisegger said. “Now you come back with a positive test on the SCRAM bracelet and for the crime of drinking a beer, you find yourself back in jail. Is that really a good reason to come back to jail?”

A lot of Aemisegger’s clients simply cannot afford the bracelets (which monitor alcohol consumption), drug-patch monitoring, or location monitoring services.

“You put them on monitoring for $300 a month and you might as well have set the bail at $350,000,” Aemisegger said. “They can’t pay it.”

Aemisegger has no doubt that the jail will fill if a new facility is built, based on the experience of other facilities in Montana. What he would like to see is an alternative solution where people are screened for release from jail and more money is put into pretrial services to help people connect with resources before they land in the slammer.

He points to Mecklenberg, North Carolina, where the community was considering building a new jail in 2005.

According to a case study report released by the National Association of Counties, in 2008 a crisis response team in Mecklenberg implemented a new plan that focused on connecting people with community resources when they encountered law enforcement instead of immediately sending them to jail.

By 2010, the jail population had begun to go down. A January 2016 quarterly report of Mecklenberg County’s jail population put the most recent average daily number of inmates at 1,500. That is down substantially from the 2,699 in 2007 before the crisis team got to work.

Aemisegger said he thinks there is similar progress that can be made in the Flathead Valley if money is focused on criminality’s beginnings instead of building a new jail to deal with its endings.

“Regardless of how large you make the jail, we will find a way to fill it,” Aemisegger said. “The question becomes should we be filling it and is there a better way?”

Curry said his office is continually looking for solutions.

“We continue to try and move to a more permanent solution and we’re working on that pretty diligently,” Curry said.

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