Beyond the Assumptions:

What I Heard, What I Learned, and

Why Asking One More Question Matters

Behind the Reporting: What I Learned

About Yellowstone County's Jail Debate

By Hannah G. Olson

“Why don't they just send the prisoners to the state?”

“Why don't they use the jail in Hardin?”

“Why are people sitting in jail when they haven't even been convicted?”

“Why don't they invest in treatment instead of building more beds?”

These were among the questions I encountered while reporting on the proposed expansion of the Yellowstone County Detention Facility. And I had some of the same questions myself. They seemed reasonable. Some even seemed to have obvious answers. Until I started asking them.

Over three days of intensive reporting, I conducted 12 in-depth interviews, toured the detention facility, and followed questions through court processes, corrections policies, budgets, treatment programs, and the experiences of people who had lived and worked inside the system. What I discovered wasn't that everyone asking those questions was wrong. It was that the answers were almost always more complicated than the questions suggested.

Sometimes an assumption was incorrect. Sometimes it contained an important piece of truth. Sometimes the proposed solution was already being used. And sometimes I discovered that the people working closest to the problem had been asking the same questions for years. The more I learned, the less interested I became in proving an assumption right or wrong. I became interested in what happened when I challenged it.

With Yellowstone County voters facing consequential decisions about public safety, incarceration, and taxpayer dollars on November 3, I believe we owe ourselves something more than easy answers. We owe ourselves the next question.

What Does It Actually Mean to Be in Jail?

One of the first things I wanted to help people understand better was the difference between jail and prison. County jails hold people for many reasons. Some are awaiting trial or sentencing. Others are serving sentences, awaiting placement in state facilities, or being held for other legal reasons. Being in jail doesn't necessarily mean someone has been convicted of a crime.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, 68% of people held in local jails nationally at midyear 2024 had not been convicted. That's a national statistic, not a Yellowstone County figure. It also doesn't mean those individuals should automatically have been released. But it does mean we cannot use “in jail” and “convicted of a crime” interchangeably.

I also learned that the information available on a public jail roster doesn't always tell the whole story. A person might appear to have a relatively low bond, but another pending case, warrant, sentence, or probation or parole hold could prevent their release. Similarly, a nonviolent charge doesn't automatically establish that someone is eligible for community supervision. That doesn't mean concerns about unnecessary detention or unequal access to release aren't legitimate. They are. It means we need more information before drawing conclusions about individual cases.

And it raises a consideration that stayed with me throughout my reporting: the conditions inside a jail affect people who haven't yet been convicted, along with those who have. The responsibility to maintain a safe and humane facility doesn't begin only after a verdict.

Aren't There Other Places These People Could Go?

This was one of the most common questions I encountered, and it came in several forms. Why not send people awaiting prison placement to the state? Why house federal detainees? Why hold people from other counties? Why not use the detention facility in Hardin? Each question deserved an answer.

When I interviewed Yellowstone County Undersheriff Robert Lester, approximately 91 people inside the jail were awaiting placement with the Montana Department of Corrections. Another roughly 40 were federal detainees, and five to seven were being held for other counties.

Those numbers are significant, but at the time of that interview, the jail held approximately 675 people in a facility rated for 434. Even if every individual in those three groups had been transferred immediately, more than 530 people would have remained. The jail still would have been overcrowded. The state placement backlog contributes to the problem. So does housing people for other jurisdictions. But neither fully explains the overcrowding.

The Hardin question was similarly complicated. Yellowstone County had investigated using the Two Rivers detention facility, but identified concerns involving infrastructure, insurance, staffing, transportation, operating costs, existing Bureau of Indian Affairs use, and access to courts and medical services. A detention building might already exist, but that doesn't necessarily make it a practical or cost-effective solution for another jurisdiction.

What I found interesting wasn't that these ideas had no merit; it was that the people working on the problem had already considered many of them. And even when a proposed solution could help, it often addressed only one part of a much larger problem. I began to recognize a pattern: an idea can be part of the answer without being the entire answer.

What If We Tried Keeping More People Out of Jail?

This was one of the assumptions I was most interested in investigating. And what I learned surprised me.

Yellowstone County already uses a range of approaches intended to reduce unnecessary detention. The County has worked to improve court processing, expand arraignment opportunities, increase access to pretrial services, and use community supervision and electronic monitoring. The recently completed 72-hour holding facility is another part of that effort.

Alternatives, Inc. operates programs that combine supervision, accountability, case management, treatment connections, and other support for individuals who may be appropriate for community-based alternatives. Brandy Sanders, Alternatives' Director of Community Programs, explained that those efforts aren't intended to eliminate the need for jail. “This is not going to solve your jail problem,” she told me. Sanders described helping appropriate individuals leave jail with supervision, monitoring, and treatment so they are less likely to return. That can free space for people who do need to remain in custody.

The important distinction is that these alternatives aren't merely ideas being proposed for the future; they're already operating. And yet, the jail remains overcrowded. That doesn't mean the programs aren't worthwhile. It means they haven't eliminated the need to address the conditions and capacity of the existing facility.

But I kept returning to another question. If we're considering a substantial investment in additional detention space, shouldn't we also be examining whether we're investing enough in the programs that prevent people from ending up there? The answer is that the proposed expansion includes additional space for treatment, education, counseling, and other programming inside the jail. Those improvements could benefit people already in custody, but they're different from expanding community-based mental-health treatment, addiction services, housing support, diversion, and other resources intended to prevent incarceration in the first place.

Yellowstone County already funds certain community-based mental-health and public-safety services. However, the ballot language for the proposed new $20 million annual public-safety levy does not specify an amount dedicated to expanding those programs. That doesn't mean the funding couldn't support them. It means the available ballot language doesn't establish how much additional investment, if any, would be directed toward prevention and diversion. It also doesn’t mean that what the current proposal does provide won’t also contribute to the ripple effect which will keep people from returning to jail.

This was one of many nuanced and complicated questions that can’t simply be answered without an effort in critical thinking and understanding how each existing and proposed system work hand in hand to create a safer community and reduce incarceration and recidivism.

For people who believe a larger jail should be accompanied by stronger efforts to reduce incarceration, that's an important question, and it's a question that deserves a specific answer too.

What Happens When People Don't Have Room to Get Better?

One of the most compelling interviews I conducted was with Jeremy Newell, who shared his experiences with addiction, homelessness, involvement in cartel-related drug trafficking, repeated arrests, incarceration, and ultimately, recovery. His experiences were far from ordinary. Jeremy also survived two separate targeted shootings connected to his involvement in the drug trade, lending a sobering perspective to his accounts of violence, fear, and what it means to feel unsafe, even while behind bars.

His story wasn't simple. There were setbacks, consequences, and years of involvement with the justice system before he reached a different place in his life. Jeremy doesn't dismiss the importance of accountability or the role detention sometimes played in his own experience, but he also believes incarceration without meaningful opportunities for change misses something essential.

“If you're just expanding the jail and putting more beds, then what's the point?” he asked. “You've got to add something to it. You've got to add a treatment aspect to it.” His experience doesn't prove that every intervention works or that everyone will succeed, but it challenges the idea that repeated arrests mean someone is incapable of changing. It also raises a practical question about public safety.

Most people who enter a county jail will eventually return to the community. What happens during their incarceration matters to the people they return to. That became even more apparent when I spoke with Amanda Stonerock, who helped develop Yellowstone County's Jail Based Program.

“To have effective outcomes, you have to have effective space to do it,” she told me. Amanda described conducting assessments in closets and other makeshift spaces because appropriate rooms weren't available.

Chyrel Snedigar of Rimrock, a Billings-based nonprofit that provides substance use disorder treatment, mental health services, and recovery support for individuals and families, raised a similar concern. “Our position isn't necessarily that we need more beds for more incarceration. What we do need is better access to the people who are currently incarcerated.” That distinction stuck with me too.

A service can exist without being adequately accessible. Having treatment providers willing to help doesn't mean they have the space, privacy, or opportunities necessary to do their work, and having someone in custody doesn't mean we're making effective use of the time they're there.

The proposed expansion includes additional programming and treatment areas intended to address some of these limitations. Whether those improvements ultimately lead to better outcomes would need to be measured, but the need for appropriate space became much easier for me to understand.

What I Saw Inside the Jail

When I toured the detention facility, the numbers I'd been studying and the accounts I'd heard became much more tangible.

At one point, a man in a holding cell screamed obscenities at everyone who passed, his face pressed against the glass. I was understandably startled, but Jail Captain Brandon Smart didn't simply dismiss him as a problem inmate. Instead, he spoke about how difficult it is to see someone who needs meaningful help inside a jail, while also recognizing the responsibility to protect that individual, the people around him, and the staff responsible for their safety.

That moment captured a tension I encountered throughout my reporting. Compassion for someone in crisis and the responsibility to protect public safety are not mutually exclusive.

It also brought another aspect of the detention process into focus. Before someone can be booked into the jail, they must be medically cleared. If an individual has an injury requiring treatment or is experiencing an acute mental-health crisis, they may need evaluation or treatment at a hospital or another appropriate facility before being accepted into custody. Medical clearance doesn't necessarily mean someone no longer needs care; people can arrive at the jail with significant physical, psychological, or behavioral-health needs that must continue to be managed within a correctional setting.

And then I thought about something Jeremy Newell had told me about his own experience in the jail. “When you pack so many people into a big area like that with no separation, where you can't get away from anybody, that just creates a ticking time bomb,” he shared. Suddenly, overcrowding wasn't an abstract number or a debate about how many beds could fit inside a building. It was about what happens when the space needed to safely manage people no longer matches the number of people inside.

We also discussed something harder to quantify: what prolonged overcrowding can do to a person's sense of safety, dignity, and hope.

When people are confined in crowded conditions with little privacy, limited personal space, and few opportunities to escape conflict, the environment itself can intensify fear, frustration, and tension. Some may withdraw or lose hope. Others may become more defensive, aggressive, or inclined to align themselves with groups for protection. Those conditions can make an already difficult environment more volatile, not only for the people incarcerated there, but also for the corrections officers and other professionals responsible for maintaining safety.

One of the more troubling realities emerged from my conversations with both Jeremy, Captain Smart, and several others: the relationship between overcrowding and gang activity inside the facility.

Smart explained that when gang-related conflicts arose in the past, staff often had the ability to separate individuals by moving them into different housing units. As the jail population increased, those options became more limited, making it harder to manage rivalries, intimidation, and potential violence.

Jeremy described witnessing another side of the problem. He recalled young men entering jail, some barely 18 or 19 years old, and being approached by older individuals already involved in gangs. What might initially appear to be friendship, belonging, or protection could become manipulation and exploitation, including pressure to obtain money from family members outside the jail.

For someone young, vulnerable, or unfamiliar with incarceration, those influences can be particularly difficult to navigate and have implications that spill out beyond the jail’s walls and into our communities. Gang relationships formed or strengthened behind bars don't necessarily end when someone is released; they follow people out, potentially perpetuating cycles of intimidation, exploitation, and violence.

It's a particularly troubling possibility for young people who may already face poverty, instability, limited support, or other circumstances that make them vulnerable to recruitment and exploitation, and it raises a question that extends well beyond the jail walls: What happens when someone enters the justice system for one offense but leaves with stronger connections to criminal activity than they had before?

That possibility doesn't establish that overcrowding is directly responsible for gang-related violence in the community, but the firsthand accounts reveal a legitimate concern about how the conditions of incarceration can influence what happens after release.

The ability to separate individuals appropriately, maintain supervision, and provide constructive programming is therefore about more than managing a crowded building. It can also affect the environment people experience and the relationships they form while incarcerated.

Crowding also places pressure on spaces intended for attorney meetings, assessments, treatment, and programming. It complicates the already difficult work of providing care while maintaining order, particularly when individuals have complex medical or behavioral-health needs. I asked and certainly learned how difficult it can be to find appropriate placements for people experiencing serious mental illness.

County Civil Attorney Melissa Williams acknowledged that some individuals need treatment in settings better equipped to care for them. When discussing the argument that people with significant mental-health needs belong in treatment rather than jail, she responded, “Amen. Yes, they do!”

But she also explained that appropriate placements aren't always available, particularly for individuals with severe behavioral-health needs and serious pending criminal matters. That can leave jail staff responsible for managing individuals whose needs exceed what a detention facility is designed to provide.

The proposed expansion includes dedicated medical and mental-health beds, along with additional healthcare space. Those improvements wouldn't turn the jail into a psychiatric hospital or replace the need for stronger community-based treatment options. But they could improve the conditions and care available to people who must remain in custody.

I came away understanding that overcrowding isn't simply about comfort or the number of beds available. It's about human dignity, the safety of everyone inside, and whether a facility has the space and resources to fulfill its responsibilities.

It's also about recognizing that the environment itself can become part of the problem, with consequences that may extend far beyond the jail walls.

What Happens If We Don't Build?

One of the more consequential things I learned came not from an interview, but from looking into the history of the jail itself. The current Yellowstone County Detention Facility opened in 1987, following legal challenges involving conditions at the County's previous jail. In April 1981, a lawsuit brought those conditions before the federal courts.

The following year, U.S. District Judge James F. Battin issued a published opinion in Noren v. Straw, finding constitutional violations involving prisoners' access to legal resources and inadequate disciplinary procedures. The court ordered the County to submit corrective proposals within 30 days.

The judge also addressed the County Commissioners' responsibilities for maintaining the facility and protecting people in custody. “The conditions did not appear overnight during the tenure of the present commissioners,” he observed. That statement struck me. The problems before the court hadn't developed overnight. They were the result of conditions that had persisted over time.

According to Yellowstone County's official history, the litigation and court intervention contributed to the decision to replace the aging jail rather than renovate it.

It's important to be precise about what the court actually ordered. The published March 1982 opinion required specific corrective actions, but it did not explicitly order construction of the jail that opened in 1987. Establishing the complete sequence of court directives would require reviewing the original 1981 order and any subsequent orders.

So, knowing that history, it’s worth asking: Could the courts intervene again if conditions remain problematic? It's possible, but a no vote wouldn't automatically trigger a court order requiring construction. A yes vote wouldn't guarantee that every concern about detention conditions would be resolved either.

The County's legal obligations to people in custody continue regardless of the election outcome. That's what makes the history relevant.

The question isn't simply what the proposed expansion would cost. It's also what obligations and expenses remain if the proposal doesn't move forward, and what other solutions might be necessary.

Will a Bigger Jail Actually Solve the Problem?

This was another assumption I found myself challenging from more than one direction. A larger facility could improve conditions inside the jail. But that doesn't mean it would automatically reduce crime throughout the community. Nor does additional capacity guarantee that overcrowding will disappear for decades.

The County's January 2025 Jail Needs Assessment projected that, if existing detention patterns continued, the system would need approximately 892 beds by 2029, 975 by 2034, and 1,277 by 2049. A narrower projection focused on the population under Yellowstone County's responsibility estimated 836 beds by 2029 and 1,199 by 2049.

Those figures aren't guarantees about future incarceration. they're projections based on assumptions about population, detention patterns, and operational requirements.

The County subsequently pursued a smaller proposal than the consultants originally recommended. Its August 2026 Master Plan Addendum calls for 332 new beds, bringing the main detention facility's rated capacity to 766. It also identifies 82 short-term holding beds, producing a combined stated capacity of 848. Those short-term beds serve a different function than traditional detention housing and shouldn't be treated as interchangeable.

The revised plan reflects changes in court processing, anticipated efficiencies, and other efforts intended to reduce detention demand. It also provides infrastructure for possible future expansion. But the addendum continues to reference the earlier long-term projections rather than providing a new year-by-year population forecast demonstrating precisely how much those reforms will reduce demand.

That leaves a question worth asking: If the original projections suggest a need for more beds than the current proposal would provide, how confident should voters be that the smaller expansion will be sufficient?

County Attorney Scott Twito offered insight into the decision to pursue a smaller project. “We want to stay lean and mean,” he told me. Twito expressed concern that building substantially more capacity could create pressure to fill those beds and reduce the incentive to maintain improvements in court processing and supervision. He also described the importance of accounting for anticipated changes in state prison capacity.

That reasoning deserves consideration. So does the question of whether those expectations will materialize.

The proposed construction bond would authorize up to $175 million over 20 years, while a separate permanent public-safety levy is expected to generate approximately $20 million annually.

Those are substantial commitments. Voters are entitled to examine not only the documented need for improved conditions, but also the proposed project's affordability, long-term sufficiency, operating costs, and expected results.

And if the expansion proceeds, the questions shouldn't end when construction is completed. Will overcrowding decrease? Will staff and people in custody be safer? Will treatment providers have better access? Will fewer people return to jail? Those outcomes matter just as much as whether the building is completed on time and within budget.

What I Still Don't Know

For all the questions I asked and information I gathered, there are things I still can't answer with certainty.

I can't tell you exactly how many people currently incarcerated at YCDF could be safely and legally supervised in the community with additional resources.

I can't tell you precisely how much of the overcrowding is attributable to changes in crime, court processing, state placement delays, or other factors without a more comprehensive analysis of those trends.

I can't tell you whether the smaller proposed expansion will adequately address future demand, or exactly how much additional funding would be directed toward community-based prevention and diversion.

And I can't tell you whether the decisions made in November will ultimately reduce repeat incarceration or improve public safety across Yellowstone County, although I do feel confident that from what I learned, it should help.

Those unanswered questions don't erase what the reporting established; they help define the limits of what we know.

There's a difference between saying “I don't know” because we haven't bothered to look and saying it because we've looked carefully enough to understand what the available evidence can and cannot tell us. Recognizing those limits is part of critical thinking, too.

The Assumptions We Make About Each Other

Something else became clear throughout this process: People can look at the same problem and reach different conclusions about how to address it.

Some believe the proposed expansion is necessary to improve safety and conditions. Others question the cost, the scale of the project, or whether more should be invested in treatment and diversion before adding detention capacity. Those differences don't automatically mean one group cares about public safety and the other doesn't.

Supporting additional detention capacity doesn't necessarily mean someone wants more people incarcerated or is avoiding the larger systemic issues at play. Questioning the expansion doesn't necessarily mean someone is indifferent to crime victims, law enforcement, corrections staff, or the conditions people face inside the jail.

In fact, some of the professionals I interviewed who recognized the need for additional space also spoke passionately about keeping appropriate individuals out of jail.

I heard concern for victims and accountability, but also for treatment, rehabilitation, mental health, and the people who eventually return to our neighborhoods from nearly everyone I spoke with. Those aren't always competing values.

Montana Women's Prison Warden Katie Weston summarized something I came to understand throughout this reporting. “Everybody has to remember that it is a community issue. It's not just a criminal justice issue.”

She's right. The jail is connected to courts, law enforcement, prosecutors, defense attorneys, probation and parole, state corrections, mental-health services, addiction treatment, housing, employment, families, children, victims, schools, jobs, and the people who eventually return to the community.

It is one visible part of a much larger system. When another part of that system lacks capacity or resources, the effects can show up inside the jail. And what happens inside the jail can affect what happens throughout the community.

Adding beds alone cannot solve every problem that contributes to incarceration, but ignoring the conditions inside the existing facility doesn't solve those problems either. Understanding that complexity doesn't require us to agree about the proposed solution. It requires us to take the problem seriously enough to consider more than one perspective.

What I Heard. What I Learned.

When I began researching Yellowstone County's jail expansion, I thought I was investigating a question about a building. Did we need a bigger jail?

What I found was a story about people, systems, decisions, and the consequences of what happens when those systems don't work as intended.

I found people working to keep others out of jail and people working to keep those inside it safe. I found treatment providers trying to reach people in overcrowded spaces. I found public officials wrestling with financial decisions and individuals whose lives had been shaped by incarceration, addiction, recovery, and second chances.

I found people who disagreed about the proposed solution but cared deeply about many of the same things.

And I found that some of the things I thought I understood were considerably more complicated than I'd imagined.

We often treat changing our minds as a weakness, admitting uncertainty as ignorance, and asking questions as evidence that we haven't done our homework. I think we've got that backwards.

Critical thinking isn't about having the strongest opinion in the room. It's about having the discipline to examine that opinion, seek information that might challenge it, and recognize when the evidence supports something different from what we expected. It's about distinguishing facts from interpretations, possibilities from promises, and explanations from excuses.

It's about understanding that we can listen to someone without agreeing with them, question a proposal without dismissing the problem, and recognize a problem without automatically endorsing the proposed solution.

That's not indecision. That's responsible citizenship.

The decisions before Yellowstone County voters involve substantial public money, community safety, individual rights, and the future of a system that affects far more people than those who work or live inside the jail.

We won't all reach the same conclusion. Nor should we expect to. But we can demand better of ourselves than repeating what we've heard because it sounds right, feels right, or supports what we already believe.

We can read the proposal. Examine the numbers. Listen to the people closest to the issue. Seek out perspectives that challenge our own. Ask what a proposed solution will accomplish, what it won't, and what alternatives have actually been considered.

And when someone offers an answer that seems almost too simple, we can ask one more question.

Throughout this reporting, I kept returning to two things: What I heard. And what I learned. Sometimes they were the same. Often, they weren't.

The difference wasn't always that someone had given me bad information. Sometimes the difference was simply that I hadn't asked enough questions yet, and that may be the most important lesson of all.

Being an informed citizen doesn't mean knowing everything. It means caring enough to keep learning, especially when what we learn challenges what we thought we knew.

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Disclaimer: This essay is independently written and published by Hannah G. Olson. All views, opinions, and interpretations expressed are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Simply Local magazine, its publishers, or any organization, agency, committee, or individual referenced in the article. This publication is not sponsored, affiliated with, or endorsed by any political campaign, organization, or committee. It is intended to encourage informed discussion and independent consideration of the issues, not to advocate for or against any ballot measure.

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About the Author

Hannah G. Olson is a Billings-based writer, communications strategist, and founder of Narrator Creative Consulting. With a background in writing, public relations, and community engagement, she has spent much of her career telling the stories of people, organizations, and issues shaping Montana communities. She is a contributing writer for Simply Local magazine and an adjunct instructor of public speaking at Montana State University Billings.

This independently published essay expands on Olson's reporting for Simply Local's feature, Beyond Capacity, examining the proposed Yellowstone County jail expansion and the complex issues surrounding it. Drawing on 12 in-depth interviews, extensive research, and a firsthand tour of the detention facility, Olson shares the questions, perspectives, and unexpected insights that emerged beyond the scope of the original article. Her goal is not to tell readers how to vote, but to encourage informed conversations, challenge assumptions, and explore the human realities behind an important community decision.

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Beyond the Assumptions is a companion to “Beyond Capacity,” published by Simply Local Magazine. It draws on interviews conducted during the reporting process, Yellowstone County project documents, the January 2025 Jail Needs

Assessment, the August 2026 Master Plan Addendum, the published federal court opinion in Noren v. Straw, and national criminal justice statistics. Interview-time jail populations are historical snapshots, not current daily counts.

Read the original feature: https://simplylocalbillings.com/beyond-capacity