Montana Governor visits new Flathead reentry facility

KALISPELL – Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte on Wednesday toured the Flathead Valley Reentry Facility, which has been operating for just over six months and graduated its first residents into the community this spring. 

“By helping offenders find employment, access resources, and reconnect with their families, this center is giving Montanans a better opportunity to successfully rebuild their lives and contribute to their communities,” Gianforte said in a statement about his visit. “Together, we’re promoting a safer community by providing our returning citizens with the support they need.”

The reentry facility, also known as a “prerelease center,” is the first one owned and operated by the state Department of Corrections, and filled a much-needed hole of service in northwestern Montana. 

“Kalispell was one of the places where we did not have a pre-release facility up here, but there was demand for it,” Department of Corrections Director Eric Strauss said during the tour. “We like to get people released from prison, going to pre-release as close to their community as possible. That reintegration in their community is an important part of the rehabilitation process. So having one here for the community and for people who want to return was important to us.”

Across Montana, the state currently contracts with five nonprofit organizations to provide four prerelease centers that serve female offenders and seven prerelease centers that serve male offenders. But northwest Montana, which comprises three of the state’s top-10 most populous counties, didn’t have one until last October.

Fifteen years ago the state tried to locate a facility in the Flathead Valley, but met with staunch opposition from local residents. 

There was also opposition to the new Flathead Valley Reentry Center, which had a rocky road to existence. 

In 2023 the state legislature appropriated $7.1 million for the facility, and the department proposed a 90-bed prerelease center on the edge of Kalispell city limits at the site of a former hotel in Evergreen.

Corrections officials initially presented the proposal to the Flathead County Commission in 2024, and two of the three commissioners, along with the county jail commander, expressed support for the facility. 

But the county’s Board of Adjustment denied a necessary permit for the facility, leading to a lawsuit from the state. An agreement was reached in spring of 2025, paving the way for the former hotel to be repurposed. 

Flathead County Commissioner Pam Holmquist, who represents Evergreen, was the lone vote against the facility, citing negative feedback from residents near the proposed facility. 

Jim Sanderson, the facility’s director, said in the six months since they opened the doors, he has received “zero complaints.”

“And I encourage complaints. We want to be very, very good neighbors,” Sanderson told the Daily Montanan. “We intentionally identified the number one risk to the facility initially was public perception. We had a series of open houses before we opened. We had three complete days of open houses that the public was invited to, which were very well attended, and a lot of naysayers kind of understood that this isn’t what they assumed it would be.” 

In the facility, which currently has 38 residents, offenders live at the center, and adhere to strict schedules, drug testing protocol and work requirements.

Residents will work in “everything from food service to construction to anything that we can find,” Strauss said. “Ideally we have people working towards a career.”

Within the facility, which retains its Montana hotel decor, replete with wooden furniture and multiple big game mounts on the walls, there are multiple rooms for residents to spend their free time watching TV, or playing pool or board games. 

A large solarium off the lobby offers natural light, even during the thunderstorms that rolled through the Flathead on Wednesday, and every free bit of space in the facility offers a place to be comfortable and interact with other residents. 

“It’s intentionally positive,” Sanderson said. “We’re trying to create that type of a positive culture, because resident offenders, that’s what we call the inmates, … a big hurdle for them is they’re used to an overwhelmingly negative interaction when you’re locked up in a jail or locked up in prison.”

One recent graduate of the program, Jason Williamson, said the program was beneficial to him for getting back to the routines of regular life. 

“When I first got here, I didn’t know what to expect, really,” Williamson told Gianforte. “And then, so it turned out to be a deal of learning, getting back to a schedule, you know, getting back to a new work program … so it was a really good program.”

Gianforte also spoke to a current resident who had been in the facility for about three months, and is originally from the Flathead Indian Reservation. 

He told the governor that it’s been “very beneficial to keep my family together, because distance is definitely problematic,” and by being in the Flathead facility he’s been able to see his family regularly, including his young daughter.

“To be able to hold her and hug her and everything like that, to have that contact … we need that in life,” he told the governor. “If I was over there in Billings or something, we wouldn’t be able to do that.” 

According to DOC, approximately 88 percent of the residents at the new facility were sentenced from Flathead, Lake, and Lincoln counties. A current DOC dashboard shows that 13% of the statewide pre-release population — 138 individuals — were sentenced in Kalispell region courts. 

Strauss and Sanderson said the facility is adding residents every week and will continue ramping toward the 90-person capacity as they continue working through the hurdles of operating the first state-run facility. 

“We’re going to fill it up,” Strauss said. “There’s a need. The system is still overwhelmed in terms of secure beds. So we’re working with our community partners to provide treatment, and trying to figure out good community placements for individuals, and then proving that this type of environment works.”