HAMILTON — A federal jury unanimously sided with Ravalli County in a lawsuit over the county’s jail diversion program, ending a yearlong court battle. They found that the county did not violate the rights of those who could not pay program fees.
The jail diversion program offers an alternative to incarceration in some cases through GPS, drug and alcohol monitoring. It offers pre-trial supervision and misdemeanor probation services. Those enrolled have to pay fees, which fund the program.
In the lawsuit, filed in 2021, the plaintiffs accused Ravalli County, the courts, judges and jail diversion program of false imprisonment and due process violations. They claimed they had their bail revoked solely for not being able to pay the fees.
Ravalli County Sheriff Steve Holton said that is false, that bail is only revoked for other violates and arrests are not made because of unpaid fees.
“In fact, we carry about a $250,000 debt of unpaid, uncollected fees. Those fees are what runs the jail diversion program itself,” he said. “The jail diversion program is an extremely expensive program to run. All the monitoring actually costs the county money for, every day, somebody's being on monitoring, whether it's the alcohol or drug patches, the GPS, it’s very expensive.”
The case was resolved last Thursday in the county’s favor at the federal courthouse in Missoula. During the trial, the judge dismissed the false imprisonment allegations before the jury unanimously found there were no due process violations.
The jail diversion program was started in 2018. Since then, Holton said it has reduced the jail’s average daily population by more than 30%, which previously was near capacity most days.
“The reason we started it in 2018 was in an effort to kind of depopulate our jail a little bit, but also provide people that are arrested with the opportunity to get out of jail with a lower bond and either get a job or keep the job they currently have,” he said. “You know, contribute towards their own family and really try to help people out.”
