Legislative fiscal office projects rising prison population, warns state will need more capacity

Walker Hopkins of the Legislative Fiscal Division told the House Judiciary Committee that the MARA (modernization and risk analysis) tool projects long‑term corrections trends and highlights gaps in Montana’s criminal‑justice data. Hopkins said Senate Bill 11 (2023) aims to build a data warehouse to join law‑enforcement, court, corrections and public‑health datasets so policymakers can analyze flows through the system.

Hopkins said the Legislative Fiscal Division’s model uses quarterly Department of Corrections facility reports, reported crime and convicted‑offense counts and an exponential‑smoothing time‑series method that weights recent years more heavily. "Senate bill 11 passed by the 2023 legislature is a bill which is attempting to create a data warehouse gathering data from all these systems," he said. He cautioned the current projections stop at the first quarter of fiscal 2024 and may understate more recent increases.

The presentation highlighted operational pressures: Hopkins reported about 328 male jail holds and 111 female jail holds waiting for DOC placement and said contracted, out‑of‑state capacity has changed over time (120 beds appropriated for Arizona in 2023, later reported at 240 and 360 at different points). "The average construction cost for a prison bed right now is somewhere in the 300 to $500,000 range," Hopkins said, and he noted House Bill 5 contains a $150,000,000 request to add 512 beds at Deer Lodge — a figure he described as on the low end of likely construction costs.

Hopkins told legislators the female offender population has grown faster than the male population; females make up roughly 10% of the overall offender population but 25–30% of jail holds, a disparity driven in part by drug‑related offenses and by having only one in‑state facility for women. Under the baseline projection, he said female population growth could be about 51–52% through 2044 if current trends continue.

Representatives asked whether the model captures people who cannot stand trial for mental‑health reasons and whether per‑officer arrest rates are included; Hopkins said data are limited now, that the Senate Bill 11 warehouse should enable more linkage with public‑health records, and that arrest counts do not map directly to future DOC admissions. He also provided early operating estimates: an initial staffing analysis for new units showed roughly 70 positions for two units; HB5 includes a maintenance line of about $1,000,000 and Hopkins estimated ongoing operations and maintenance might run about $6–7 million per year, with contracted secure beds sometimes costing about $90–$92 per day.

The committee requested the HB5 select‑committee report and the presentation slides for review. The chair scheduled executive action and additional hearings on the committee calendar for Monday.