Critical Staff Shortages Force Big Changes at Cascade County Jail

Earlier today, I, along with several other media outlets, received a press release regarding "immediate operational changes" being made at the Cascade County Detention Center.

Unfortunately, these changes were announced as a result of a staffing shortage.

Immediate Changes at the Cascade County Detention Center

According to the press release we received, changes include the following:

All U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) detainees, along with individuals awaiting transfer to Montana State Prison, currently housed at the Detention Center must be coordinated for pickup and removal by Monday, September 21.
The City Court inmate population will be limited to a maximum of 15 people at any given time.
Once the 15-person City Court limit is reached, an existing City Court inmate will need to be released or transferred before another person can be placed in the Detention Center.
Agencies will need to determine which individuals must remain in custody and arrange transfers or other housing for those who can be moved.

Apparently, these difficult changes came after the staffing situation became more critical "following four employee resignations."

How the Cascade County Detention Center Changes Affect the Community

I had an opportunity to speak with Sheriff Slaughter almost immediately following this press release and asked him some questions regarding the changes.

Chris: Sheriff, I got the press release and, I saw this, apparently things are getting critical, when it comes to staffing over at the Cascade County detention center. Let's talk about it. What's going on?

Sheriff Slaughter: Yeah. So we've, we've been having many struggles for over a year now.

We have literally tried everything we can think of up to this point to help mitigate it. Unfortunately, we are not at a staffing level at this point where we can safely protect the inmates, protect the detention officers in our community. So, we have to do a reduction in inmates to create a safe environment for everybody.

It's something that's really challenging and I don't take lightly. Our detention officers have literally been on forced overtime this entire time to protect our community. And it's a huge, huge shout out to them, because they have sacrificed their, you know, families, their home life, everything to keep our community safe for a long time.

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It's very, very difficult, you know, and we have an eighth amendment constitutional right to protect all these inmates and keep them safe. And, just looking at the way things were, we were at a critical tipping point where we had to get some inmates ordered out of our facility.

And I also want to say this, we wanted to do it in a responsible way, so that we could still make arrests of dangerous people in our community, you know, whether it's a felony or a serious misdemeanor, we wanted to be able to, empower our law enforcement that, you know, the jail isn't shut down.

People can still go to jail. People can still be arrested and not create a ripple effect. It goes out and affects public safety.

Inmate Transfers and Release Plans

Chris: Now, I did see, Sheriff, in the press release that certain inmates under immigration and customs, customs enforcement and customs and border protection detainees, along with individuals awaiting transfer must be picked up and removed by September 21st. Now let's just assume, if there is a challenge in there that prevents an inmate from getting transferred out, what happens to that inmate?

Sheriff Slaughter: It's unknown that that is going to be a call that is going to have to be made by immigration customs and border protection on how they will deal with that.

Chris: Agencies are going to determine which individuals must remain in custody, which will arrange transfers and others, who can be moved. I'm imagining some are concerned that inmates may be released into the community. I'd love to give you a chance to address if there's concerns from the community about that, what would you say to those people?

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Sheriff Slaughter: There are some nonviolent offenders that will be released, but those that are of concern to public safety will be released, on pretrial services and some on, GPS monitoring. These are inmates who would definitely qualify for pretrial programs so there is accountability and security to them.

And again, like I said before, those, those inmates that would be released like that would be nonviolent.

Hiring High Standards and Long-Term Retention

Chris: I know it's hard to kind of predict what's coming in the future and timelines and things like that. But I know this is probably the first step in a conversation that has had explored many avenues for solutions or even temporary solutions. Is there a timeline that you could foresee at least getting things back to where it's not so critical?

Sheriff Slaughter: Yeah, it's a tough thing to say and I'll tell you why. So, when we got into this manning issue, we did the opposite of what most law enforcement agencies do. Most law enforcement agencies would lower their standards to hire more people.

We've done the opposite. We've actually increased our standards. And the reason we did that is retention.

We want to retain our employees that we hire. And we find that through these more, difficult standards to get hired, we're finding that those employees typically stay longer, because they, you know, they're a more resilient employee and so it's tough, you know, we're hiring for quality, not necessarily quantity.

And you know, we had to make a hard choice and that's why we decided to do what we did as far as reducing our population.

The caveat to that that's a good news is we are creating an environment when our new employees come on staff, they aren't overwhelmed with low manning and, as much massive forced overtime, you know, because new employees who just started a job, you don't want to burn them out from the word go. So, I think that's also going to help with our recruitment as well, because they're going to come into an environment, doesn't have as much forced overtime.

Staff Overtime and Inmate Awareness

Chris: Now I have to ask sheriff was, as far as the inmate population goes, how aware are they that the staff is, is at a critical point right now, whether it be through exhaustion or just shortages, are they in tune with that or is that something they're kind of trying to, you know, you keep that info away from them?

Sheriff Slaughter: You know, I think for the most part, our staff does such a good job. Like I said, we mandated overtime. So, to them it might not appear that we're short staff because we're calling people and on days off and making them stay late to cover that.

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So, from their point of view, they're probably not likely seeing that. Obviously, our staff is feeling it. They've done a tremendous job, you know, getting through this.

And, we just want to make sure that we keep the great employees we have, and we take care of them.

Community Support and Public Safety Impact

Chris: What do you think the average citizen can do, Sheriff Slaughter, to show their support? The detention center is super important in the judicial process and just the legal process in general. What can you advise the public to do, whether it's being proactive in the community or anything else to speak up about to help support this from happening again in the future?

Sheriff Slaughter: Support your jail, support your local county jail, understand that they're always not out there. They're not visible in the public as other law enforcement is, but they are absolutely our most critical branch of public safety.

Without them, we wouldn't have public safety. If we don't have the ability to incarcerate dangerous people in our community, then we don't have a community, we have a very dangerous crime ridden community.

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So, support them. Support them in every way you can and encourage people to apply. We're going to start with lower numbers to take the stress off and then we'll increase them when time is appropriate and we'll have the proper ratio of detention officers to inmates to make the work environment safe, not only for the attention officers, but also for the inmates and create a successful outcome, which I'm confident we'll do.

The Bad Guys WILL Go to and Stay in Jail

Chris: I have no doubt that you, that you will. And finally, Sheriff, I know you're busy. I have one question that just popped into mind about, individuals or citizens who may be concerned about, you know, violent offenders that would be arrested now and have to populate the detention center. How would that work for someone who is a new offender going in there amidst this crisis where we're having to move people out?

Sheriff Slaughter: Oh, they're coming to jail. They will come to jail and they will, uh, they will, you know, they will have the opportunity to make bail, just like any other offender.

That's a constitutional right. Other than that, if they can't make bail, they'll sit in jail.

Chris: Is there anything else you'd like to share with us or you feel like people should know before we let you go?

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Sheriff Slaughter: Yeah, this is a difficult decision, a decision that we have pushed off for well over a year having to make, and that's a credit to our staff because our staff has taken it on the chin and, and sacrificed you know, all of their work-life balance, their family time, everything to make this successful. They're the true heroes of how long we've been able to do this. And, you know, we had to make a hard decision.

It was time. And, we hope to get enough people hired up and then get back to business as usual as soon as we can.

Chris: I have no doubt Sheriff that we'll get right back on track. I appreciate you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to be here with us.

Sheriff: Thank you so much.