Author: mtipadmin1

 Below is an op-ed from our Executive Director, Amy Sings In The Timber, published in the Missoulian yesterday.

The piece expands on Amy’s “hills I will die on” essay from a few weeks ago, diving deeper into one of her strongest-held beliefs: we cannot fix mass incarceration by building more prisons.

Thanks for being part of this conversation and for continuing to stand with us as we work toward a Montana justice system that is accurate, accountable, and fair.

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There are a few things I will never stop believing when it comes to criminal justice.

Public safety matters. Accountability matters. And so does recognizing when someone has served meaningful time, demonstrated rehabilitation, and is ready to safely return home.

Montana has a mass incarceration problem. According to The Sentencing Project’s 2025 report, Montana’s prison population grew 32.4% between 2018 and 2023—the fastest growth in the nation. That growth occurred as national crime rates reached historic lows, pointing to policy choices, rather than rising crime, as a significant driver of Montana’s prison growth.

Montana’s incarceration of women is particularly alarming. A 2025 analysis by the Prison Policy Initiative found that Montana incarcerates women at a rate of 282 per 100,000—higher than every U.S. state except South Dakota and any independent country in the world. Notably, nearly 40% of the population at Montana Women’s Prison is Indigenous.

These numbers should make us ask a challenging question: If we are already incarcerating so many people, will increasing carceral capacity actually solve the problem?

I don’t believe it will.

Montana is investing hundreds of millions of dollars to expand Montana State Prison, adding almost 1,000 beds. The expansion is intended, in part, to bring approximately 600 Montana men currently housed out of state back to Montana.

In Yellowstone County, voters will consider a $195 million bond this November to expand and renovate the county detention facility, which currently houses more than 600 people on a typical day despite being rated for 434.

I understand why these investments are being proposed and why many support them. Overcrowding is real, and people who are incarcerated—and the people who work in these facilities—deserve safe and humane conditions.

Montana is also reconsidering how it addresses overcrowding in its women’s facilities. The Department of Corrections is relocating approximately 50 women from Riverside Correctional Facility to Pine Hills as part of a plan to increase prison capacity for incarcerated women from 300 to 500 beds. The decision not to build an entirely new women’s prison is, in my view, a small but positive step in the right direction. It recognizes that we do not need to build a new facility every time we face a capacity problem.

But we should go further. More prison beds will not solve what is driving incarceration. If we want to reduce incarceration, we have to strengthen the pathways that already exist for people to leave prison when they have demonstrated accountability, rehabilitation, and readiness to safely return to their communities.

Parole is one of those pathways. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, community supervision in the United States has declined steadily. Since peaking in 2009, the rate of people on probation and parole has fallen by nearly one-third nationwide. The report also shows that Montana’s parole supervision population has steadily declined since 2020.

Decarceration is not about abandoning accountability or ignoring public safety. Montana’s own Board of Pardons and Parole describes parole as a proven method of reentry that encourages people to address the issues that contributed to their criminal behavior, accept responsibility, and prepare to return to their communities.

“Tough on crime” is powerful rhetoric because it can give people a sense of security. But when we talk about public safety, we should also look closely at what the data tells us. Violent crime is not rising in Montana, yet our prison population has grown faster than any other state. If we are incarcerating more people while violent crime is declining, we have to ask whether more incarceration is actually making us safer or simply making us more accustomed to incarceration as the answer.

At Montana Innocence Project, we see firsthand what incarceration costs, not only people behind bars, but their families and communities. We also see the possibilities for change. When people who are ready to return home are given that opportunity, our communities benefit. They can reunite with family, parent children, work, pay taxes, and contribute to civic life. Montana must build systems that recognize and support these possibilities instead of ones that perpetuate cycles of incarceration.

Montana does not need more jail and prison beds. Montana needs more safe pathways home.

If we are serious about solving Montana’s mass incarceration problem, we have to stop asking only how to accommodate more incarceration and start asking how to safely reduce it.

 

Earlier this month, members of our team attended the Innocence Network Conference in Chicago alongside client Bernard Pease Jr. and his sister Linda Thomas. The conference brings together directly impacted individuals, advocates, attorneys, and organizations from across the country working to free the innocent, prevent wrongful convictions, and support people returning home after release.

For our team, it was a powerful reminder that Montana is part of a growing national movement committed to truth. The experience was energizing and inspiring for everyone who attended.

Brady Minow Smith, Legal Director

Brady shared that one of her biggest takeaways was learning new ways to use expert witnesses and specialized expertise to strengthen cases and better serve clients. She was proud to share Bernard’s story and the Montana Innocence Project’s new strategic direction with the broader innocence community. Brady also reflected on how powerful it was to hear directly from exonerees and freed individuals who shared their stories at the conference’s close, saying their resilience and refusal to give up were deeply moving. She returned home, in her words, with “new energy to tackle injustice in Montana.”

Charlie McWeeny, Intake & Pro Bono Coordinator

Charlie attended his first Innocence Network Conference and was struck by the sheer size and strength of the movement — exonerees, family members, advocates, and legal teams all united around justice. Charlie shared that conversations about advances in forensic science opened new possibilities for testing and evidence review in older cases, and he was excited to workshop litigation strategies with attorneys from across the country that may help current Montana clients. But what stood out most was the response to the Montana Innocence Project’s evolving work. Charlie said his time in Chicago reinforced his belief that even among innocence organizations, MTIP is unique. Organizations from across the country were eager to learn about our expansion into unjust conviction and manifest injustice cases. Their enthusiasm confirmed his belief that MTIP is charting exciting new territory through this work.

Bernard Pease Jr., Freed Client

For Bernie, the conference offered something equally powerful: connection. Hearing what others had survived and overcome reminded him that he was not alone. He shared that the experience made him feel stronger and gave him positive energy. He emphasized that what stood out most was being there with the support of Montana Innocence Project staff and his sister, Linda. Bernie reflected, “I learned about other people and what they went through. It really made me feel like I wasn’t alone.”

Linda Thomas, Bernie’s Sister

For Linda, the conference was eye-opening and unforgettable. She shared that she learned there is “so much more than I ever dreamed of” when it comes to the innocence movement and the people working to correct injustice. Linda spoke proudly about the national community fighting for people they believe are innocent. She was especially moved by hearing courageous stories from others impacted, including a former police officer who stepped away from working in the system after seeing someone he loved become caught in it. Her favorite memory was watching her brother and other freed and exonerated people walk onto the stage. Linda said passionately, “Every citizen of the United States should go to one of these and see what happens. Everybody should attend one.”

Montana incarcerates women at one of the highest rates in the world — and Indigenous women are disproportionately represented, making up more than 40 percent of the population at Montana’s women’s prison. In this episode of Unpacking Injustice, we are joined by Kristina Lucero, a citizen of the Tseycum Band of the Saanich Nation on Vancouver Island and Director of the American Indian Governance and Policy Institute, to begin unpacking the roots of this crisis.

Throughout the conversation, Kristina grounds policy and data in personal history, including the story of her grandmother, Mary Jack, a boarding school survivor whose experiences reflect the intergenerational trauma created by federal Indian boarding school policies. She explains how historical trauma continues to shape the lives of Indigenous women and families today.

We also examine how colonization disrupted Indigenous governance, criminalized culture, and replaced community-based healing with punishment, and how that trauma intersects with poverty and lack of access to resources — often turning survival behaviors into pathways to incarceration.

Kristina draws our attention to Montana’s women’s prison, where Indigenous women face limited access to culturally grounded healing, trauma-informed care, and meaningful rehabilitation. Kristina highlights the ripple effects incarceration has on children, families, and communities, and why healing during incarceration is essential for both individual well-being and long-term public safety when people return home.

This high-level conversation begins to break down complex issues that Unpacking Injustice will continue to explore as the Montana Innocence Project implements its new strategic plan, with a specific focus on addressing the unjust incarceration of women and survivors. This episode lays the groundwork for continued dialogue, understanding, and action toward justice.

Click here to listen, or search “Unpacking Injustice” on Spotify or Amazon Music.