Montana corrections officials are considering shipping some inmates to out-of-state prisons this fall due to a methamphetamine-fueled spike in felons sentenced to hard time.
In a letter to Gov. Brian Schweitzer last week, Corrections Director Bill Slaughter said the state's prisons are overcrowding and backing up into county jails.

"Our adult offender population is exceeding the emergency bed capacity of our'' state prisons, the July 26 letter reads.

The state is housing 257 inmates in county jails because there is no room either at the Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge or at the state's only private prison, Crossroads Correctional Center in Shelby. Counties, meanwhile, are sitting on roughly 3,750 outstanding felony warrants they cannot serve because they have no place to house the felons if they catch them.

"We're certainly bursting at the seams,'' said Joe Williams, administrator of Corrections' Centralized Services Division
Williams said if the state is still holding 200 or more inmates in county jails by mid-September, the agency would start moving inmates to out-of-state prisons.

Williams said the state is facing two problems.

First, the Corrections Department is in the middle of launching expansions approved by the 2005 Legislature. Those include adding 200 more slots in pre-release centers, a move that will require building more centers or adding on to existing ones. Department officials also are turning an old wing of the state prison into a ''revocation center,'' where felons out on probation and parole can be sent temporarily if they violate the terms of their release.

Additionally, agency officials are in the early stages of arranging for a new, lock-down meth treatment center with room for up to 60 people and a 256-bed prison for inmates with special needs, like mental illness or elderly inmates. Private, non-profit companies, like the kind that currently run the state's pre-release centers, will likely build those institutions. Finally, the department is trying to hire more probation and parole officers and correctional officers.

Second, Williams said, while those expansions may offer a short-term fix to overcrowding in the state prison, the long-term conundrum of how to deal with meth in Montana will continue. Without a statewide meth strategy, the state's penal system will continue to fill up with meth-related felons as fast as the state can build new prison cells.

"We've filled 1,500 new cells since 1998 and I'm looking to build more,'' Williams said. "You can't build your way out of this. We need to start hacking away at the root causes of dependency.''

He said he's optimistic the new lock-down meth treatment center will be successful and pave the way for more, similar institutions where addicted felons learn to be drug and crime-free when they're released.

Montana last sent inmates to out-of-state prisons in the mid-1990s due to similar overcrowding problems. Republican Gov. Marc Racicot sent some inmates first to a prison in Texas, where one Montanan briefly escaped and others were wounded by bullets when guards broke up a protest. In May 1997, a Montana inmate died in Texas after other prisoners beat him with a barbell weight in the prison exercise yard.

Montana prisoners were then sent to other prisons in Tennessee and Arizona. Two Montanans escaped from the Tennessee pen.