Billings has dealt with jail overcrowding before. A riot helped create today's facility

The Yellowstone County Detention Facility has an overcrowding problem.

With a stated maximum holding capacity of 434 inmates, the jail now routinely averages over 600 daily inmates.

Several short-term solutions have been enacted to address the issue, but the core issue of overcrowding remains. To ease these concerns, county commissioners placed a combined $195 million bond and levy on this November’s ballot to finance an expansion.

If passed, $175 million in bonds would be issued to fund a 332-bed expansion, bringing the jail’s maximum capacity up to 767 inmates, and $20 million would be levied annually to fund it. If the measures fail, county leaders will face a gambit of tough questions regarding the path forward.

So, while county leaders may not know what the future holds for their attempts to ease jail overcrowding, they most certainly do not want to undergo a repeat of events from the last time Yellowstone County built a new jail.

Three jails

Throughout its history, Yellowstone County has operated three detention centers.

It’s first, opened in 1884, was located at 401 N. 27th St. and served as the county jail until 1961, after which the building was repurposed into the Yellowstone Art Museum.

The county’s second jail was located on the eighth floor of the Yellowstone County Courthouse and was in use from 1961 until 1987, when construction was completed on the current Yellowstone County Detention Facility.

Several factors played roles in the switches, such as outdated facilities, increased prisoner loads and in one instance a federal court order.

‘Inhuman conditions’

On Oct. 3, 1979, 15 inmates in the county jail started a small riot, smashing windows, tearing up plumbing and barricading themselves into one of the cellblocks.

Fed up with what they described as “inhuman conditions,” the inmates caused no injuries, took no hostages and only demanded to meet with the media to publicly plead their case.

“We don’t want any violence we just want to make people aware of what we’re doing,” one inmate yelled to a gathered crowd on the street below through a broken eighth floor courthouse window.

Then County Sheriff Dick Shaffer promised to let the inmates meet with members of the media after he completed an investigation into the incident. Soon after, the riot was quelled peacefully.

After completing his investigation, Shaffer kept his promise and allowed the prisoners to meet with the media.

While speaking with reporters, the inmates detailed their list of complaints, among them inconsistent visiting hours, censorship of mail, poor living conditions and inadequate access to medical treatments and legal services.

“I’ve been in other jails, and this is the worst one I’ve ever been in,” Morgan W. Allore, one of the inmates, said to reporters.

After the riot, Shaffer said he wanted to improve living conditions at the jail but didn’t have the requisite funds to do so. However, he said most of the problems with the jail stemmed from inmate overcrowding.

“Shaffer said the major problem was simply overcrowding in an inadequate jail,” reporter Lorna Thackery wrote in the Friday, October 5, 1979, edition of the Billings Gazette. “The facility was designed for 62 prisoners, he said, and, on some weekends, there are more than 80 prisoners in the cells.”

The ACLU gets involved

In the aftermath of the riot, several ideas were thrown around to increase the size of the county jail, but no concrete plans ever materialized and overcrowding persisted.

“A lawsuit alleging that the general conditions of confinement in the Yellowstone County Jail are such as to subject inmates to cruel and unusual punishment would have a very high chance of success,” consultant Blake Sutton wrote in an independent 1980 report of the county jail.

Taking note of the poor conditions, the American Civil Liberties Union and Billings attorney Jeffery Renz, representing three inmates, sued the county in early 1981 in federal court over the jail’s conditions.

Before the case went to trial, the two sides negotiated a settlement, presided over by U.S. District Court Judge James Battin.

County officials agreed to reduce and cap the number of inmates in the jail to its maximum capacity of 62, while simultaneously working to increase the standards of living for inmates. Because of the county’s concessions, Renz, the ACLU and the inmates agreed to drop their suit.  

“Renz believes he and the ACLU have been vindicated by Battin’s verdict,” Patricia Elich wrote in the Sunday, October 31, edition of the Billings Gazette. “The suit he said, forced Yellowstone County to open its eyes to the plight of jail prisoners.”

The Yellowstone County Detention Facility

After reducing the number of inmates to 62, county officials began looking at options for expansion. 

However, they quickly realized expanding the eighth-floor jail would be too expensive and in November of 1984 put a $7.6 million bond on the ballot to construct a new detention center.

Voters approved the measure by around 9,000 votes and construction on the new jail began in earnest, wrapping up in the summer of 1987.

Originally, the new jail held a maximum of 174 inmates, but by the mid-1990s, overcrowding again became a concern.

To address the issue, two new dormitories were constructed in 1997, adding around 100 more beds to the jail. In 2018, the county built a second 148-bed expansion solely to house female prisoners, bringing the facility to its current maximum capacity of 434.

Despite these expansions, inmate counts have continued to increase and jail overcrowding has once again become a preeminent issue in Yellowstone County.