Annual jail report looks grim

By TED SULLIVAN, Chronicle Staff Writer

The most recent annual report on Gallatin County's jail is bleak: The average daily inmate population exceeds capacity; detention officers are quitting; and more than $300,000 was spent to house inmates in other counties.

According to the jail's fiscal year 2007 report, the daily average population in the jail is more than 77 inmates a day, although not all of them are housed here.

Roughly 53 of those inmates, an average of the population counts on the first day of each month, were held in the Gallatin County jail, which has an operational capacity of 39.

Another 21, also based on those first day of the month counts, were held in Broadwater County - at the cost of $55 per inmate per day. Gallatin County also must pay transportation costs, which include gas and time to drive to Townsend and back, according to the report.

During that 12-month period, Gallatin County paid Broadwater County $311,795.

“We're just throwing money away,” Gallatin County Sheriff Jim Cashell said.

“That's a huge chunk of our budget,” Sheriff's Lt. Brian Gootkin, the jail's administrator, said.

The annual budget for the jail is about $2.5 million.

The jail also hired 18 detention officers in the past year, a testament to how much turnover occurs with the staff. The jail staff had a 66 percent turnover rate, although the turnover rate for jail workers nationwide is high.

Cashell said part of the reason for turnover is that the facility is hot and crowded.

“You've got to remember that people that work there have to be in that facility too,” Cashell said.

Working in a jail, Gootkin said, is also considered an entry-level job into law enforcement. He said officers tend to gain experience and leave to become police officers, sheriff's deputies or highway patrolmen.

County voters have twice rejected paying for a new jail, but the fiscal report is evidence that a new jail is needed, Cashell and Gootkin said.

The county plans to go back to voters a third time next year, possibly in the spring, with hopes that a bond issue for a new jail would be approved.

Meanwhile, the crowding is expected to get worse, Gootkin said, and the county expects to spend more than $400,000 to house inmates in Broadwater County jail in the next 12 months.

And with Broadwater County's jail filling up, Gootkin said, inmates might have to be held in Choteau County's jail north of Great Falls. Transferring inmates there and back will take eight hours round trip.

“We're already filling up Broadwater County,” Gootkin said.

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