Lewis and Clark County hosts walk-in hiring event for detention officers

Lewis and Clark County will open its detention officer hiring process to walk-ins on Saturday, April 25, in East Helena, a move that underscores how much pressure the county’s jail operations are under.

The event will run from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Lewis and Clark Search and Rescue building, 2700 Valley Drive. Applicants will not need an appointment. They will bring a current résumé, meet face-to-face with the Sheriff’s Office selection committee, and interview on a first-come, first-served basis. Candidates who move ahead will complete a practical test on site, then continue through the county’s online application and background check process.

Sheriff Leo Dutton said the county had strong results from a similar hiring event last November and is again trying to reach people who want public service without forcing them through a longer, more formal application path first. The approach is designed for entry-level detention officer jobs, a position that sits at the center of the county’s justice system and affects how safely and efficiently the jail can operate each day.

That urgency is easy to see in the numbers. The Lewis and Clark County Sheriff’s Office has more than 120 employees and covers law enforcement, detention functions, rural fire support and search and rescue across more than two million acres. At the Lewis and Clark County Detention Center, 153 people were in custody in a recent daily snapshot. Of those, 78% were being held pretrial, 13% were convicted, and 9% were being held for parole or probation violations. The average age was 37, and 11 people had been in custody longer than a year.

The jail at 221 Breckenridge Ave. in Helena underwent renovations completed in spring 2021 after the 2017 voter-approved Detention Center Operations Levy funded an expansion meant to ease overcrowding. County documents say the project increased capacity from 58 to 156 inmates, but another county document says the current bed capacity remains at 70 and the average daily population is typically above 80, with at least 20 more people housed elsewhere in Montana. That gap puts added weight on staffing, from inmate supervision and court transport to overtime costs and daily safety inside the facility.

The detention center is not just holding people. In 2025, it delivered 420 unique programs to 3,966 program attendees, and county records show 6,400 behavioral health encounters there since February 2023. Prisoners in custody make their initial court appearance by closed-circuit television at 1 p.m. Monday through Friday, which ties jail staffing directly to the speed of the broader criminal justice system.

County recruitment materials list detention officer starting wages at $24.89 to $26.20 an hour, while a Sheriff’s Office posting lists base pay at $21.56 to $22.69 an hour and identifies Keni Grose as the contact. County employees also earn 1% longevity pay for each year of service.