To help pay for the treatment program and to help inmates start paying back the debts they owe the community, Yellowstone County would implement an inmate work-release program. This would be different from the old program, where people spent only the weekend in jail. These inmates would be in jail primarily and would only leave during their approved work hours. This program would not be for violent offenders, but for those who have recently graduated from the treatment programs, or offenders not in need of treatment but otherwise without income.

Those who have graduated from the treatment program and are working in the community would pay a supervision fee until they are released from jail. These inmates would pay the jail $0.40 for every $1 they earn to fund treatment. The rest of the inmates' money would go toward post-jail housing savings and any owed child support and restitution.

If there are about 90 inmates in the program at any time, working full-time, making an average of $15 per hour, would return $1,000,000 to the county every year.

When I worked with offenders as a case manager, we had to complete the Montana Offender Recidivism and Risk Assessment. This tool is used by the state to judge risk in an offender. One of the sections in there is work. We know there is a higher risk of repeating offenses without a stable job.

The most important point is that, based on national averages, the jail's daily inmate count would be between 15 and 45.

By introducing a treatment program that reduced the number of inmates by between 60 and 120, we now conservatively have 75 fewer people every day, and the people in jail are not the community.

The next big driver of jail population is mental health.