Montana DOC Narrows Women's Prison Search to Three Candidate Sites

Montana Department of Corrections Director Eric Strauss told a legislative interim budget committee last week that the state has narrowed its search for a new women's prison to three locations: Deer Lodge, Boulder, and Miles City.

DOC initially identified about ten possible sites before focusing its analysis on the Montana State Prison campus in Deer Lodge, the Riverside Correctional Facility in Boulder, and the Pine Hills Correctional Facility in Miles City. Strauss said the other proposed locations have not been fully eliminated, but that it made the most sense to pursue expansion on property the department already owns and is familiar with.

The push for more capacity reflects a gap that state leaders say has been evident for years. Montana currently holds about 300 beds for female inmates: 250 at the Montana Women's Prison in Billings and 50 at the Riverside campus in Boulder. The target is to expand statewide capacity to house at least 400 female inmates.

Funding for the project comes from House Bill 833, passed during the 2025 legislative session, which appropriated $246 million for renovating and building prison facilities statewide, with language specifically including a new facility for female offenders. How much of that total is earmarked for the women's facility has not been publicly detailed.

Strauss delivered the update during a Wednesday meeting of the legislative interim budget committee, part of a series of interim sessions held in Helena the week of March 16-18. Other locations that had been under discussion, including Butte, Anaconda, Billings, and Hardin, remain candidates in principle, though none of those cities hosts an existing DOC-owned correctional facility.

No final site has been selected, and DOC has not released a projected construction timeline, a per-facility budget breakdown, or a design capacity for the proposed new building.