MT quietly doubles the number of inmates in an Arizona prison

Last year, Montana contracted with CoreCivic to move 120 inmates to the Saguaro Correctional Center in Eloy, Arizona, to solve an overcrowding problem so persistent that inmates were piling up in county jails while waiting for a prison bed. The contract paid CoreCivic about $8 million over two years for 120 beds.

However, the Department of Corrections' publicly accessible online dashboard listed 246 inmates at Saguaro on Tuesday. The website listings show that number rose from 120 on Aug. 8 to 149. As of Aug. 13, 208 inmates were housed in Arizona, and as of Monday, 239 inmates were housed in Montana.

After the Montana State News Bureau raised questions about the increase, the Department of Corrections submitted an updated contract with CoreCivic for the additional 120 beds, now totaling 240 beds, recently acquired through the state procurement process. The rate from the original contract – $90 per bed per day – remains in place.

The previous contract ran from November 1, 2023 to October 31, 2025. The new contract changed the term to August 1, 2024 to July 31, 2026.

“Managing Montana's prison population has always been challenging because there are limited beds to accommodate fluctuations,” Department of Corrections Director Brian Gootkin said in a statement to the Montana State News Bureau on Wednesday. He added that the agency continues to work with lawmakers to address prison population needs and has taken steps to meet those needs in the meantime.

“One of these actions was the acquisition of additional beds in out-of-state prisons. The transportation of 120 male inmates to the Saguaro Correctional Center in Eloy, Arizona, took place over the past month, bringing the total number of inmates there to 240.”

The deal for CoreCivic has increased from $8 million over two years to $19 million over three years. Nine months passed under the previous contract agreement, meaning CoreCivic has been paid about $3 million since November. The new contract should pay CoreCivic $16 million over the term, assuming the rate does not increase.

This figure does not include the contract with CoreCivic for its privately run prison facility in the state near Shelby.

Although the department made an announcement to that effect when transfers to Arizona began last November, it did not directly respond to a question about why the increase in transfers was not announced this time.

“The Department has been transparent with stakeholders and legislators about population growth, the challenges it presents, and efforts to address it,” Gootkin said. “DOC participated in a public RFP (request for proposal) process for the additional prison beds and is committed to providing accurate information in the daily population report dashboard on its publicly accessible website.”

The Justice Department has made it clear that it would likely need more beds than the original number in Arizona because overcrowding in county jails persisted despite the initial transfer. The original contract, including the number of beds and the $8 million agreement, was created by a law passed by the House, which is not currently in session.

The original agreement came after heated debates in the 2023 legislative session. The bill to fund the transfer failed and was revived several times. Republicans, who had a bicameral supermajority, approved the deal almost unanimously. When a Republican member of the House voted for an amendment to remove the proposal from the bill, she was isolated and berated by the caucus leadership.

The state legislature set up a committee specifically to address prison capacity, which will, among other things, monitor the situation in Arizona and make recommendations for the 2025 session.

The chairman of this committee is Republican Senator Jon Esp from Big Timber. In a phone call on Wednesday, he said he was unaware of the current increase in inmates being transferred to Arizona, but understood the agency's needs.

“I knew it was coming, but I didn't know it was going to happen now,” he said. “They were pretty open about the situation we're in and that we don't have enough capacity. We keep getting people who are more violent and get longer sentences, and it's difficult to keep them in the general population in MSP (Montana State Prison) as it is currently designed.”

Democratic Rep. Emma Kerr-Carpenter of Billings is vice chair of the Public Safety Appropriations Subcommittee, which oversees the state's prison budget. When Kerr-Carpenter heard Wednesday's news, she said she was unaware of the increase or how capacity might have been increased.

“In my opinion, we're operating with 120 beds, and that's how it's been all this time,” she said in a phone interview. “So to suddenly hear that we have more than twice as many Montanans in another state is very, very confusing to me.”

In his statement Wednesday, Gootkin said they would continue to work with the Prison Capacity Committee to manage bed numbers.

“The Department continues to work with the Special Committee on Correctional Capacity and Systems Development (HB 5) and looks forward to the Committee's recommendations to the Montana Legislature in 2025 regarding long-term solutions. In the meantime, the Department is evaluating various options and taking actions to meet the needs of Montana's offender population.”