The Section D subcommittee heard a budget-and-program overview from the Montana Department of Justice(DOJ) for the Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI), which DOJ leaders said has added staff and new programs after a recent wave of legislative funding.

Attorney General Austin Knudson and DCI Administrator Lee Johnson told the committee that DCI is handling higher caseloads in major crimes, narcotics and digital forensics and that recent staff increases were necessary to meet those demands. Knudson said state special revenues support a significant share of DCI operations and that last sessionfunding has brought the division more capacity.

The overview matters because DCIsupports county and municipal law enforcement on homicide, officer-involved critical incidents, computer crimes, human trafficking and drug task forces across the state; its staffing and technology choices affect response times, case backlogs and victim services.

DOJ leaders described how session funding added positions across DCI bureaus and created new teams and technology to reduce backlogs. Knudson said the division now includes expanded major-case coverage, narcotics task-force integration and a larger computer-crimes lab. "DCI does really all of our major criminal investigations and a lot of our special services programs," Knudson said.

Lee Johnson, the DCI administrator, provided a program-by-program summary. He said DCI now has just under 150 full-time employees and four major bureaus: investigations (major crimes, narcotics), crime information (computer forensics, the Montana Analysis and Technical Information Center, SR/violent-offender compliance), special services (victim services, the sexual-assault kit initiative, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons task force), and support programs such as Medicaid fraud and the fire marshal program. "We were invented in 1971," Johnson said, "and we're sitting at just under a 150 full time employees now." He added the division is not asking for additional initiatives this session because of resources added in the prior session.

Officials described several program-level changes and priorities:

- Major crimes and case management: DCI added positions to reduce triage of complex investigations and has implemented a new case-management system to consolidate files. Johnson said a 40% increase in major-case investigations drove hiring in the prior session.

- Narcotics and human trafficking: The narcotics bureau reported increased fentanyl and methamphetamine seizures statewide, work on two federal task forces (southwest and eastern Montana task forces), expansion into organized retail-crime investigations and investments in field-testing equipment that aligns with crime-lab standards.

- Computer crimes and digital forensics: DCI described major growth in device seizures, citing a single case with 23 devices producing 3.5 million forensic artifacts. The computer-crimes lab has been reorganized, staff trained to forensic standards, and the agency is seeking national lab accreditation to reduce backlog.

- Special services and victims: The special services bureau now houses the sexual-assault kit initiative (SACI), a cold-case investigator for tested kits, a Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons (MMIP) task force coordinator, an elder-justice criminal unit and the Office of Consumer Protection investigators assigned for consumer-fraud cases.

- Coronerinquest instruction: Johnson described an instruction added to coroner's inquest guidance to acknowledge when an investigation shows a suicide-by-law-enforcement ("suicide by cop") component. "If you determine that there is evidence present in the investigation that shows that the person basically used law enforcement to commit suicide... then you must check the box and find that as a finding," Johnson said. He framed the change as a transparency tool to surface evidence that had sometimes been buried in other proceedings.

Budget and funding: DOJ officials said much of DCI's recent expansion was supported by prior legislative appropriations. The transcript records state-special revenues of roughly $10 million for the biennium supporting about 30% of appropriations, plus general fund and federal grant streams for Medicaid fraud and crime-victim benefits. DCI personal-services authority for the biennium was described as just under $24,000,000 with a modest increase compared to the base.

Committee questions focused on federal grant variability and crime-victims compensation funding. Beth Thompson, DOJ budget supervisor, and Dana Toole, special services bureau chief, explained that federal crime-victims compensation funds are federal VOCA grants that operate as a payer-of-last-resort and that a claimant can receive up to the statutory cap described in the program. Thompson said state general-fund and restitution dollars are used first and then federal funds reimburse at a set match rate.

What was not decided: Committee members asked for additional budget detail on federal special revenues, the SACI workload and the MMIP task force budget, but no formal appropriation or vote occurred during the hearing.

The committee signaled it would follow up with budget-office materials related to federal grant fluctuations and DCI's state-special revenue sources.

Ending: DOJ staff and bureau chiefs remained available for committee questions after the presentation; the subcommittee moved on to hear the Highway Patrol presentation later in the same meeting.