The Detention Center
Hill County Detention Center
- Operated byHill County Sheriff's Office
- OpenedSeptember 1, 1999
- ReplacedThe Hill County Jail, built in 1916
- LocationPart of the Hill County Justice Center complex, Havre, MT, per the county site
Source: Hill County, MT — Sheriff/Coroner · checked 2026-08-24
Transparency rating
1/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✗Beds and daily population — not published
- ✗What it costs taxpayers — not published
- ✗Deaths in custody — not published
- ✗PREA audits — not published
- ✗Independent inspection — not published
- ✗Who else it holds, and for how much — not published
- ✗How to post bond — not published
- ✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year built1999 (current facility); replaced a jail built in 1916
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Jamieson Ross
- TitleSheriff/Coroner
- Office size12 sworn positions patrolling 2,916 square miles; county population 16,673 (per county site)
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Hill County, MT — Sheriff/Coroner · checked 2026-08-24
The Judges
Montana District Court judges (elected, serving a multi-county judicial district) and county Justices of the Peace (elected countywide) are the judicial officers who handle bail; neither is a county administrative official. The Justice of the Peace typically sets bail at first appearance.
12th Judicial District Court (Chouteau, Hill, and Liberty Counties)
- Hon. Kaydee Snipes Ruiz
- The county's bond schedule
- Share of the jail population held pretrial
- Median time from booking to first appearance
Source: the state judiciary · checked 2026-08-24
The County Commissioners
They pay for the jail. The sheriff runs it.
- What they controlThe detention budget, the building itself, and the agreements that let other agencies rent its beds.
- What they don'tDay-to-day operations. The sheriff is separately elected and answers to voters, not to the board.
- The boardBoard of County Commissioners →
- Where the jail money is decidedAgendas and minutes →
Notes on the record
- The Sheriff/Coroner page publishes a schedule of civil-process and miscellaneous sheriff's-office fees (e.g., civil service, garnishment/execution, concealed-weapon permits) but no jail phone/video-visit/commissary rates, so 'fees' is recorded as no.
- No dedicated jail roster, capacity, budget, PREA, inspection, death-in-custody, contract, or bond information was found published on the county's own site.
- Montana has no confirmed statutory adult jail inspection agency; state_inspection recorded as empty per the research brief.
- Board of County Commissioners (e.g., Perry Atchison is listed as a Commissioner on the county site).
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Hill County and what it costs the people who live here. Nationally, almost 77% of the people who died in local jails in 2019 had not been convicted of anything, and suicide was the leading single cause of those deaths (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Mortality in Local Jails, 2000–2019).
How much is your sheriff — and your judge — costing you?
Your VOTE is POWERFUL.
The sheriff who runs this jail is elected. So are the commissioners who pay for it.
Names verified 2026-08-24 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered