Facts and Policy Reforms for Montana
Like most states, Montana’s prison population has exploded in recent decades.
Between 1980 and 2016, the state’s prison population increased 416 percent. As of 2019, there were 2,706 people in Montana prisons, and in 2015, more than 2,000 additional people were held in county jails across the state.
In 2015, nearly one in five people who entered a Montana prison were admitted for a drug offense, 67 percent of which were possession offenses. Between 2008 and 2018, admissions to the state’s prisons increased by 24 percent, while over the same time period, releases from prison increased by only 18 percent. While the average state imprisonment rate dropped by 7 percent between 2000 and 2016, Montana’s rate of imprisonment increased by 6 percent over the same period of time.
Unsurprisingly, Montana’s mass incarceration has had a huge impact on people of color, especially Native Americans. In 2017, Native Americans accounted for 5 percent of all adults in the state, while 20 percent of all men in prison and 33 percent of all women in prison were Native American. Black Montanans have also been greatly impacted by the state’s mass incarceration crisis. The adult Black imprisonment rate is nearly six times higher than the white adult imprisonment rate in the state. Ending mass incarceration is a critical — although insufficient — step towards addressing racial disparities in Montana’s criminal justice system as well as its broader society.
Women are also being sent to prison in Montana at alarming rates. Between 2010 and 2018, the number of women in Montana prisons increased by 36 percent, while the number of men in Montana prisons increased by 7 percent.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
Montana can dramatically reduce its prison population by implementing just a few sensible reforms:
- Supporting alternatives to incarceration and treatment programs that address underlying drivers of crime such as mental health needs and substance use.
- Ensuring treatment options are community based and include rural and tribal areas, with proactive recruitment of Indigenous staff and staff of color as providers.
- Enacting laws that prevent private actors such as bail bond outlets from profiting off of Montanans as they navigate the criminal justice system.
- Enacting prosecutorial reform to increase transparency and enhance oversight.
- Eliminating mandatory minimum sentences, and enacting parole reform.
Were Montana to follow these and other reforms outlined in this Smart Justice 50-State Blueprint, by 2025 it could have 1,457 fewer people in its prison system, saving the state over $183 million dollars that could be spent on schools, roads, and businesses in the state.
For more information, along with detailed breakdowns of Montana’s prison population and the reforms needed to reduce it, click here.