The Detention Center
Lake County Detention Facility
- Operated byLake County Sheriff's Office
- Capacity42 inmates maximum, following a 1995 court-ordered reduction from prior capacity
- HistoryFacility moved to its current site around 1976; expanded and restaffed after a 1995 inmate death and ACLU litigation
- Staffing20 detention officers as of the source cited (up from 6 in 1995); minimum two on shift at all times
- Sheriff's Office budgetSheriff's Office total budget (patrol + detention combined) reported as over $3 million, funded through the public safety mill levy; not broken out separately for detention
- VisitationSaturdays and Sundays by appointment, 406-883-7272
- What was triedChecked lakemt.gov/272/Detention-Facility and lakemt.gov/262/Administration for address, year built, itemized budget, PREA, inspections, contracts, bond info, fees — not published; several other lakemt.gov pages were unreachable during research
Source: Lake County, MT — Detention Facility · checked 2026-08-24
Transparency rating
3/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✓Beds and daily population
- ✗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 builtNot found (facility relocated to current site around 1976, per lakemt.gov/272)
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byPublic safety mill levy funds the Sheriff's Office overall; detention-specific funding not broken out
- Beds42
Since then
- Post-1995 restaffing and capacity reduction following ACLU litigation over an inmate death (lakemt.gov/272)
The Sheriff
Sheriff Donald R. Bell
- Runs the jailYes — Lake County Detention Facility, operated by the Sheriff's Office
- Office locationLake County Courthouse, 106 4th Ave E, Polson, MT
- How the office is filledElected
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Lake County Sheriff's Office (name per third-party directory; not independently confirmed on lakemt.gov, which was intermittently unreachable during research) · checked 2026-08-24
The Judges
Montana district court judges and justices of the peace are elected. The Justice of the Peace usually sets bail at first appearance. Both are state/county judicial officers, not county administrative officials.
- 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 →
Notes on the record
- Montana has no confirmed statutory adult jail inspection agency; state_inspection recorded empty per the research brief.
- lakemt.gov repeatedly failed to load for several sub-pages during this research session (robots.txt timeouts); commissioners, judges, and detailed budget figures could not be confirmed as a result. The sheriff's name is sourced from a privately-run informational site (lakecounty-mt.org), not from lakemt.gov directly, because the pages of lakemt.gov that could be reached did not name the sheriff.
- Not found — Lake County's official site (lakemt.gov) was intermittently unreachable during research; a dedicated Board of County Commissioners page with member names could not be confirmed.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Lake 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