‘We don’t seem to be getting anywhere’: Legislators grill DOC officials over inmate education

Lawmakers expressed concern to top brass at the Montana Department of Corrections this week over an audit showing limited educational offerings in the state’s correctional facilities.

“​​I was pretty disappointed when I read the report because we have been going through a lot of these issues for at least three-and-a-half years,” said Rep. Fiona Nave, R-Columbus. “There’s been a lot of reorganization … but I’m not getting results.”

The report said education and work program opportunities at Montana’s prisons are limited, featuring long waitlists and “inconsistently relevant programs.” Auditors also found inmates’ opportunities to access programs were not equitable between private and public facilities.

At a legislative committee meeting Tuesday, DOC Director Brian Gootkin said COVID-19 impacted how the facilities managed education, and that the department is already working to get offerings back on track. But legislators say they want to see concrete evidence of these improvements and asked the department to return in six months to provide data on how things have changed.

The legislative audit division surveyed 2,380 inmates, with 48% responding, from four adult prisons across the state in Shelby, Deer Lodge, Billings and Glendive.

The report found educational offerings did not meet demand, with more than 75% of inmates saying they did not participate in education for more than a day, and a majority said classes did not prepare them for a career after release. Nearly 80% of inmates said they never met with staff to discuss their education or career goals.

Auditors found the department’s data on participation was incomplete and inaccurate, and private facilities, Crossroads Correctional Center in Shelby and Dawson County Correctional Facility in Glendive, did not consistently report education participation to the department.

The report gave DOC four recommendations of things to work on:

1. The department should identify information needs, develop roles and procedures and develop a method to track and maintain data with the implementation of the department’s new management information system.
2. The department should assess new programs, evaluate existing programs on an ongoing basis and complete biennial plans to coordinate and identify necessary resources to expand educational and industry opportunities across facilities.
3. The department should integrate education and career counseling into case management, develop a partnership with DLI to provide inmate reentry services, and design and provide targeted reentry education and services to inmates exiting the system.
4. The department should enforce education and job-related contract provisions, monitor program quality and adherence to industry standards and establish a process to identify and review programs for contracted facilities.

Gootkin said the audit was conducted “smack dab in the middle of Covid.”

The audit examined DOC practices from 2020 to 2022.

“Not only was the world shut down, but so was our prison as far as any additional educational programs,” Gootkin said. “We were just doing basic operational functions.”

Gootkin said the department was aware of and working towards changing most of what was cited in the report and spoke to changes the department has already made, like the new Offender Management System offering new data collection capabilities.

The director said the department is planning to get one-to-one tablets to be used for educational instruction in the new building under construction in Deer Lodge. He said technology sharing with contracted facilities might also be under consideration to bridge the education opportunity gap with the state’s partners.

The contracted facilities in the state were fined to the tune of $379,000 by the DOC for non-compliance, according to the department’s Chief Financial Officer Natalie Smitham, but how the department plans to use that money is still to be determined.

“Fines don’t fix anything, you know, people fix it,” Gootkin said. “So what we want to do is sit down and visit with (contracted facilities) and come up with some solutions instead of money.”

Nave asked if the department had someone on staff who was knowledgeable about the contracts who could facilitate accountability. Gootkin said the department didn’t adequately train for that position.

“We just failed,” he said.

But now the department has a better training matrix with subject matter experts on the contract monitoring process, which has been up and running for several months.

Scott Eychner, head of Rehabilitation and Programs, said the department had also paused doing case plans for inmates during Covid as a result of being short staffed, meaning no one was sitting down with inmates and asking what their goals and interests were. He said the department is starting to do that again but is currently “in flux.”

He said when Gootkin took over, data had been “siloed” in different spreadsheets for different departments but things are starting to get streamlined.

“We’ve consolidated case management into a single group under a single boss across the enterprise so that we can apply consistent processes and standards, we can track what we’re doing, we understand where things are,” Eychner said. “We’re in the process of beginning to see results.”

Sen. Chris Friedel, R-Billings, asked about how the department was planning on training inmates to meet market labor demands.

Gootkin said he’s working with the University of Montana to study what the market needs, but inmates also need a basic education and have to work towards passing the HiSET (High School Equivalency) exam. He said earlier in the meeting inmates on average have a 4th grade education.

Nave said she was understanding that educating inmates may present unique challenges but was nonetheless disappointed “to see that we don’t seem to be getting anywhere.”

Sen. Jason Ellsworth, R-Hamilton, requested the department come back in six months and give “proof” about how things have improved since the audit.

“​​I think we’re all concerned about this audit, we’re concerned for the citizens of Montana, as I believe you are,” Ellsworth said.

“We want to see something actionable.”