I just read an interesting, although confusing, opinion piece regarding the jail expansion bond issue facing Billings voters this election.
It was written by Tom Towe, a former Montana Democratic legislator from 1971 to 1995.
In the first six paragraphs he cites reasons against jail expansion, only to spend the rest of the letter arguing in its favor.
The most interesting fact he shares is that Montana leads the world in incarceration rates. Yes, THE WORLD! Montana jails 758 per 100,000 people. That’s more than the next seven NATO countries COMBINED. We jail more people than the whole of the UK, Portugal, Canada, France, Belgium, Italy, and Luxembourg collectively! (Source: Prison Policy Initiative.)
By comparison, China jails 119 per 100,000 citizens, Russia 197, Saudi Arabia 140, The United States 614. The only two countries that exceed Montana’s incarceration rates are Cuba with 794 and El Salvador with 1659. (Source: World Prison Brief). But if our jail expansion bond is passed, we can certainly give those rascals a run for their money.
Tom comments early in his opinion piece. “I refuse to believe that Montana has more bad people than anywhere else in the world. So, why should we build another annex to our jail for $192 million…” I couldn’t agree more. His reasoning for expansion gets murky thereafter.
We are definitely doing something wrong in our Big Sky state. It needs to be addressed and building a larger prison won’t fix it. Like in the movie Field of Dreams, “If you build it, they will come.”
