Cascade County officials are moving forward with their plans for a pre-trial program.

Officials have been discussing the need for such a program since at least 2018 and earlier this year, the county released a request for proposals for the program that was included as part of the 2022 county public safety levy at an estimated $400,000.

The pre-trial program is designed to keep low-level, low-risk offenders out of the Cascade County Adult Detention Center but releasing them with conditions that come with monitoring. It also includes reminders to offenders of court dates, to reduce the number of people accumulating failure to appear warrants that compound their fees and can land them back in jail.

Under the program, the county would use the Montana Supreme Court’s pretrial public safety assessment tool to determine the monitoring level.

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The tool is essentially a risk assessment algorithm designed by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation and being used by the Montana Supreme Court with a pretrial pilot program approved by the 2017 Legislature and continued by the 2019 Legislature.

The court enters information about someone who has been charged with a crime, felony or misdemeanor, and the algorithm determines their scores with a matrix that considers the public safety risk and needed pre-trial monitoring.

District court judges retain discretion as to whether to allow a defendant into the pre-trial program, but Cascade County Sheriff Jesse Slaughter and County Attorney Josh Racki said it creates more options for keeping people out of jail while awaiting trial when appropriate, leaving room for higher level offenders.

The program is only available to those accused of new felony cases, other than those charged with sexual offenses, or deliberate or mitigated homicide. Those already on probation and parole will not be eligible for the program.

The program is similar to one proposed several years ago and officials hope to have it running by September.

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Proposals were due July 1 and the county received one from Compliance Monitoring Systems, which is operating an office in Great Falls.

During a July 19 meeting, Slaughter, Racki, Deputy County Attorney Phoebe Marcinek and commissioners met to discuss the CMS proposal and steps forward.

The county is finalizing a contract with CMS for pre-trial services and will be hiring a full-time employee to coordinate the program within the county attorney’s office.

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The new county employee will manage the program and submit the information to the risk assessment tool through the Montana Supreme Court, as well as conduct checks of whether a pre-trial participant has committed any crimes while on supervision. Racki and Slaughter said only a county employee can have access to those records systems.

The employee will also attend daily initial hearings, bond hearings and more.

“It’s a pretty big job,” Slaughter said. “It’s a pretty heavy lift.”

Slaughter and Racki said the pay range is $28 to $30 hourly for the new position, which they anticipating posting this week.

Racki said that CMS is also hiring additional staff to ramp up the program in Cascade County.

Commissioner Joe Briggs asked Racki and Slaughter if they’d come up with metrics by which to measure success of the program.

Slaughter said they’ll develop tracking to monitor bond revocations, court appearances, compliance violations, new offenses, jail intake and more.

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Racki said judges can take a defendant off pre-trial supervision but the county has the ultimate say if they don’t want someone on the program since the county is managing and paying for the program.

Slaughter said, “there are people that need to be incarcerated awaiting trial.”

He said he doesn’t expect abuse of the program, but that public safety is the top priority.

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Racki said the average felony case currently takes 300 days, due in part to court backlog and delays by defense attorneys and his office is typically seeing 10-12 new felony arrests weekly, so there will be a lot of people who could qualify for the pre-trial program.

Marcinek said the pre-trial program is a tiered system and not designed to be one-size fits all.

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“Ideally this program works because we’re bearing the cost,” she said, and the court could require a defendant to pay for all or a portion of their pre-trial services.

Slaughter said they intend to run monthly reports to monitor the program’s budget and effectiveness and adjust as necessary.

“We’re not going to go over budget, we have to exist within what the people gave us,” Slaughter said.

Marcinek said they’ve had good collaboration with CMS so far so there is some flexibility depending on the offense.

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“At end of the day, a lot of these people will get out anyway, but through this we can get some monitoring,” Slaughter said, and hopefully defendants can maintain employment to remain functioning in the community and to help cover any monitoring costs if necessary.

Racki said it’s $12 per day on GPS monitoring and a drug patch is about $3 per day, as compared to holding someone in jail at $85.22 per day.

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He said the program will likely start slow as the court adjusts to having that option but expects it to grow quickly within the first year.

Racki, Slaughter and Marcinek said there are unknowns in terms of program cost since defendants will have different levels of cost depending on the nature of their offense and the needed monitoring.

“I feel like I’m buying a house with a variable interest rate,” Briggs said. “My comfort level with our ability to control this cost isn’t great, which isn’t on you guys, there’s too many variables across the street,” he said the courthouse.

“It runs against my basic instructs on how you budget,” Briggs said. “As we talked in years past, we know we need to do this, but the dollars scare me.”

Slaughter said he and Racki wish they could be monitoring some defendants who are out on bond currently, so the program will add to public safety while helping to keep people out of jail.

“We don’t need a new jail, we don’t need a bigger jail, we just need to relieve the pressure,” Slaughter said.

In January 2020, the county adopted the Montana Supreme Court public safety assessment tool in what they hoped was a way to help reduce the county jail population.

That month, Slaughter told commissioners that jail overcrowding had been chronic for years and that the average daily population for the last two years had been 475.

In 2018, the overcrowding was a factor in a riot at the jail that involved more than 40 inmates.

Since then, the county exited a contract with the state, freeing up 150 beds for local inmates and adjusting their agreements with federal agencies to lessen overcrowding.

Slaughter said after the first two fiscal quarters of the new pre-trial program, he anticipates having a better ability to predict costs.

Racki said some other counties with a pre-trial program set time limits, such as 90 days for a defendant to be on pre-trial monitoring.

Racki said in Cascade County, 90 days won’t be long enough to get a case to court, and he’s anticipating a couple hundred people a month in the pre-trial program once it gets going.

“There will be a lot of learning for everybody,” Racki said.

Jake Henry with CMS told commissioners that they have other contracts in the state and they’ve never gone over budget.

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Racki said staff will finalize the contract with CMS to bring to commissioners for approval.

He said they’ve already drafted program agreements and rules for defendants to participate.

Racki said during the February meeting that the county jail receives a lot of first time, low level offenders who might have only been dabbling in drugs. Once they get into the system and are sitting in jail working through the legal system, which takes time, or bonds out of jail but continues using drugs, so the problem gets worse and they might keep offending.

Racki said the pre-trial program would put a participant through a chemical dependency or mental health evaluation, then work to keep them clean through the pre-trial monitoring, and it might be easier to keep a person off drugs if it’s caught and treated earlier rather than attempting to address it later on.

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Slaughter said during the February meeting that there are a number of offenders on Medicaid. If they’re in jail for 30 days, they get dropped from their coverage. So, if they’re in the pre-trial program meeting their requirements, it frees up space in the jail, and they keep their Medicaid coverage, which also helps with county costs.

Racki said there are many crimes in the community related to mental health and through the pre-trial program, they can order treatment and monitor, which might help address some of the issues.

Slaughter said in February that pre-trial will dovetail with the new crisis response team locals were pursuing grant funds to develop, as well as an effort to get a grant for a crisis facility.

The county applied for $3 million over three years to remodel a floor of the Indian Family Health Center into a crisis intervention facility, hire a coordinator and restart the mobile response team.

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The county was notified in mid-July that it had been awarded grant funds but had not yet received details on how much it had received and whether all components of the request had been funded, Undersheriff Scott Van Dyken told The Electric.

Racki said he and others in the legal system have monthly meeting on jail inmates with mental health concerns. Some get sent to Warm Springs, a state facility, but once they’re released, there’s no followup with them, he said, and problems often repeat themselves.

During the July 19 meeting, Racki said he’d been notified that Warm Springs was full and wouldn’t be accepting civil commits.