by Travis Mateer
This second installment of MONTANA REPUBLICANS SUCK week features the short-sighted “fix” to deal with inmate overcrowding across the state, which was made suddenly worse by Missoula County REFUSING the shitty deal to house inmates at a lower cost than the actual cost of housing inmates.
When this refusal happened after the contract expired on July 1st, the scramble to send MORE inmates to Arizona happened without informing people who should have been informed. Here’s the Missoulian reporting on this pathetic legislative bandaid that just got MORE expensive because Montana Republicans are THAT stupid.
The unannounced decision to move more Montana inmates to a private prison in Arizona was needed after the loss of an in-state facility, Montana’s Department of Corrections director said Tuesday.
Last week, Montana completed a weekslong transfer of 120 more inmates to Saguaro Correctional Center in Eloy, Arizona. The state last year signed a contract with the prison’s operator, CoreCivic, but in June began the process of doubling that contract, which also reset the term of the agreement to run through 2026.
As the Montana State News Bureau reported last week, even state lawmakers monitoring DOC’s prison population situation were unaware the current contract for beds in Arizona’s facility had grown to 240.
Maybe if Montana Republicans hadn’t been so obsessed with Zooey Zephyr and fighting their stupid fucking culture war, they could have done some REAL work last legislative session dealing with REAL problems instead of letting Missoula County easily monkey-wrench their bandaid fix to offload inmates to another state. Here’s more from the article:
“The problem was our contract with (Missoula Assessment and Sanction Center) in Missoula was done in July 1st and we were unable to come up with an agreement with Missoula County,” Gootkin told the committee. “Therefore I had 144 beds that I had to take care of immediately, so I made that decision. … My apologies for not communicating that to the legislators. That’s on me. But I made that command decision that we had to get people moved to lessen the impact.”
No, Brian, the problem is Montana Republicans are retarded, just like Montana Democrats, and because of this retardation, stupidity reigns supreme. Paying the ACTUAL cost of inmates YEARS ago would have been better than the ensuing scramble and MILLIONS more that now has to be spent because Montana Republicans can’t do their fucking jobs.
Gootkin said the new contract, up from about $8 million to $16 million, was within the department’s budget. Additionally, he wanted to spare county sheriffs and local jails from deepening the backlog of state inmates: despite the additional beds in Arizona, 474 people in state custody still take up space in county facilities. Of that, 178 are waiting for bed space to open at one of Montana’s prisons.
“Those are some of the highest numbers we’ve ever seen,” Gootkin told lawmakers.
This stupidity is dangerous, especially as the empty cowboy hat running the AG office, Austin Knudsen, thinks he’s going to get tough on drug and sex trafficking. Here’s some bullshit from the AG website touting this empty cowboy hat’s toughening of the consequences for trafficking. Try not to laugh when you read this crap:
Since Attorney General Knudsen began sounding the alarm in 2021, reported human trafficking cases have more than doubled. In 2023, Department of Justice agents tracked 147 human trafficking cases in Montana, an increase of 39 percent from 106 cases in 2022 and more than double the 68 cases in 2021. In 2015, there were just seven reported cases statewide.
During the 2023 legislative session, Attorney General Knudsen’s office helped write and pass House Bill 112, which was developed from discussions at previous symposiums. The new law increases the penalties for sex traffickers and patrons of sex trafficking. It also provides prosecutors with more tools to prosecute sex traffickers and expands the definition of human trafficking and has helped intensify the crackdown on the sexual abuse of children and all victims.
The legislation is already helping law enforcement crack down on sex trafficking. For example, last year, officials in Bozeman conducted a sting operation and arrested 18 individuals who were charged with 18 counts of patronizing a prostitute, five counts of criminal distribution of dangerous drugs, one count of resisting arrest, and one count of patronizing a victim of sex trafficking for a child victim.
Arresting would-be traffickers is just ONE part of having a functioning criminal justice system. After arresting them, you have to ALSO have a place to put them. I hope baby Austin grows up and gets his fellow Republicans to be less retarded, because the safety of Montanans is at stake here.
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Thanks for reading!