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| Montana Convicts Sue State Prison System |
| By Billings Gazette |
| Published: 03/22/2002 |
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Sixty-five Montana convicts have sued the state over its prison system, charging that it's illegal to hold them in regional and private prisons and demanding that they be returned to the main state prison in Deer Lodge to serve their time. In a suit filed last week in state District Court in Helena, dozens of inmates charged that since they were sentenced to serve time in Montana State Prison, the state Corrections Department is breaking the law by using a network of regional jails and private prisons to keep up with a prison population that burgeoned in the 1990s. The inmates say that at regional prisons and a private facility, they don't get adequate required treatment, training or medical care - programs long established at the Deer Lodge facility. The suit against Corrections Director Bill Slaughter, State Prison Warden Mike Mahoney and other system officials, was filed by the inmates without a lawyer. The inmates also contend that prisoners are transferred away from Deer Lodge as further punishment for making human rights complaints. The lead attorney for the Corrections Department characterized the lawsuit as frivolous and said the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that inmates don't have a choice about where they do prison time. Montana was among the states that turned to out-of-state private prisons to meet the demands of a prison population that roughly doubled in the 1990s. For several years, Montana sent inmates to private prisons in states including Texas and Tennessee when there was no room at the Deer Lodge prison. In the late 1990s, the Racicot administration set into motion a plan to expand its own prison system, building a network of regional jails in Missoula, Great Falls and Glendive and a contract with a private prison built in Shelby in 1998. Today, roughly 1,300 male inmates are serving their time at the state prison in Deer Lodge. Another 860 or so are incarcerated at the other prisons, with about half in the private prison in Shelby. Koch said the Corrections Department will fight the suit, but hasn't been served with it yet nor has it begun working on its response. She said that some of the inmates who sued are already serving time at Montana State Prison and don't have legal standing. |
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