The Detention Center
Powell County Sheriff's Office Detention Facility
- Operated byPowell County Sheriff's Office
- Address313 4th Street, Deer Lodge, MT 59722 (same building as Sheriff's Office)
- CommissaryMoney order, cash, or check accepted, addressed to the inmate at the Sheriff's Office
- Video visitationLobby kiosk, Sundays 9:00am-3:00pm; remote calls/video/text via Reliance Telephone Services (external vendor, rates not published on county site)
Source: Powell County, MT - Detention Facility (via Internet Archive snapshot, 2026-08-21) · 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 builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Gavin Roselles
- Runs the jailSheriff's Office page lists 'Detention Facility' among its own services/links
- Address313 Fourth Street, Deer Lodge, MT 59722
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Powell County, MT - Sheriff (via Internet Archive snapshot, 2026-08-21) · checked 2026-08-24
The Judges
Montana district court judges and justices of the peace are state/county judicial officers elected independently of the sheriff and commissioners, not administrative county employees. The Justice of the Peace typically sets bail at first appearance.
3rd Judicial District Court — Judge (Deer Lodge, Granite & Powell Counties)
- Hon. Jeffrey Dahood
Justice of the Peace / City Judge (Deer Lodge)
- Melissa Gallagher
- 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 live powellcountymt.gov site returned an HTTP 403 Cloudflare bot-verification challenge when fetched directly; the county pages cited here were instead read via an Internet Archive Wayback Machine snapshot of the same official site, captured 2026-08-21.
- Commissary/telephone/video-visit rates are handled through the external vendor Reliance Telephone Services; no rate schedule is published on the county's own site, so 'fees' is recorded as 'no'.
- Commissioners: Dan Sager (District 1), Bill Hooker (District 2), Dwight Bacon (District 3); Finance Officer Emily Wood. Meets first, third and last Mon/Tue/Wed of the month, 9am-noon and 1-4pm.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Powell 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