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| State Plans to Open Short-term Prison |
| By The Billings Gazette |
| Published: 09/26/2005 |
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Montana corrections officials announced last week they are opening an experimental, short-term prison in Warm Springs for people who violate their probation or parole. The prison, which will be run by a Butte nonprofit prison contractor, will house up to 80 men and is expected to create as many as 34 jobs in the Butte and Anaconda area. It could be open later this year. Right now, about half of all inmates coming into Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge are people who had been on probation and parole but did not follow the rules of their release. They serve an average of two years in prison at a cost of about $50,000 each. Williams said the short-term prison would give incorrigible probationers and parolees a place to think about whether they really want to end up in prison, while saving taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars. Inmates will stay at the new prison about 30 days, at a cost of roughly $2,000, Corrections information shows. The State Prison at Deer Lodge is stuffed to capacity, and hundreds of inmates are being held in county jails, awaiting a state cell. Officials believe that a short-term prison would offset overcrowding. Mike Ferriter, head of Corrections' Adult Community Corrections program, said the short-term prison will be for men. However, a similar program could open for women in Billings, home of the Montana Women's Prison. Corrections has a contract with a Billings nonprofit to expand the current female pre-release center there from 20 to 80 beds. The contract will require constructing an entirely new building, which could accommodate a women's revocation center down the road. The revocation center will be in a mothballed building in Warm Springs, originally built in 1972 to house people sent by a judge to the state mental hospital there. More recently, it was used as the Butte-Silver Bow county jail for five years after the Butte jail burned. The building will require some renovations to get it ready to house state inmates, but Corrections information shows it could be up and running by December. The center will employ 34 people. Right now, Ferriter said, the revocation center will operate as an experiment for three years to see if the idea works. |
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