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Riverside facility changes to help address prison overcrowding [1]

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Date: 2025-08-29  

Part of Montana’s effort to reduce overcrowding in its prisons can be found a few minutes outside of Boulder.

Gov. Greg Gianforte, along with Department of Corrections Director Brian Gootkin and Jefferson County Commissioner Cory Kirsch, toured the Riverside Special Needs Unit on Tuesday, which has been repurposed under a new state law.

The name of the unit reflects who used to be there — 25 inmates described by officials as “geriatric” were moved to a special unit at Montana State Prison to open up space in the facility.

Now, 50 women are imprisoned there and the state plans to add more.

“From an agency point of view, our agency has been neglected for decades, and thanks to this governor and the last two legislative sessions, we have had generational changes and investments in our agency,” Gootkin said Tuesday.

House Bill 833, a $250 million legislative package looking to address the overcrowding issue, paid for the project. The plan is to increase capacity at Riverside from 50 prisoners to approximately 100.

“Montanans count on state and local government to make sure our communities are safe and there are consequences of committing crimes,” Gianforte said. “If the state doesn’t build prisons, prisons are not going to get built.”

On Montana’s prison dashboard, the state’s Friday prison population was 3,419 of a capacity of 3,435. Montana State Prison, the state’s largest correctional facility, was about 100 inmates over capacity. Montana State Women’s Prison was eight inmates under capacity on Friday.

There were 57 people in jail awaiting transfer to a state prison on Friday, according to the state’s prison data dashboard.

At one point a mental institution, Riverside has picturesque views of the surrounding mountains from the prison’s grounds. At several points during the tour, inmates told state officials that this was a place where prisoners want to serve their sentences in.

Gootkin agreed.

“This is the incentive,” Gootkin said. “You want to come here, and so therefore you have to behave, you have to be in the programming.”

Inmates also expressed to state officials they thought having the large open space was a huge benefit. There is a grass, open area at the center of the facility. There’s a garden, greenhouse and a gym stocked with a variety of equipment. In fact, the biggest need, inmates told Gianforte while they spoke in the garden, was more jobs and work for them to do.

Gootkin said that this first group of prisoners to Riverside would also have a hand in renaming the prison.

Kirsch said the community is welcome to having new jobs, and said the area struggled after the Montana Developmental Center closed in 2017. He noted infrastructure was already in place for an expansion of the facility.Officials seemed to be eyeing the surrounding unbuilt ground for a potential expansion.

“I think this would be an easy, easy fix for the state right here,” Kirsch said Monday. “We’re close enough to Butte and Helena to bring in some, most of the workers, and we’ll work on housing here in the interim.”

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[1] Url: https://dailymontanan.com/2025/08/29/revamped-riverside-facility-opens-to-help-address-prison-overcrowding/

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