Silver Bow County, Montana — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

Butte-Silver Bow Detention Center

Operated byButte-Silver Bow Law Enforcement Department
Address155 W Quartz St, Butte, MT 59701
Built2004
Capacity72 inmates
StaffingOperates 365 days a year; 27-28 Detention Officers plus civilian staff
Booking fee$25 assessed on all arrestees
Medical co-payDoes not exceed $10 per the site; mental health services have no co-pay
Original cost / fundingNot found

Source: Butte-Silver Bow — Detention Center · checked 2026-08-24

Transparency rating

4/10Partial

✓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
✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what Silver Bow County publishes about a jail its taxpayers own, checked 2026-08-24. Nothing here says the jail is run well or badly. Every mark moves the moment the county posts the document.

The Building

You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.

Year built2004
Original costNot found
Paid for byNot found
Beds72

Since then

Not found

The Sheriff

Sheriff Ed Lester

Runs the jailYes — Butte-Silver Bow Detention Center, part of the unified Law Enforcement Department
StructureButte-Silver Bow is a consolidated city-county government (like Denver and Broomfield in Colorado), but unlike those two, it retains an elected Sheriff who leads the combined 'Law Enforcement' department

Still needed

Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail

Source: Butte-Silver Bow — Law Enforcement (Message from the Sheriff) · checked 2026-08-24

The Judges

Montana district court judges are elected officials of the state judicial district; Silver Bow County's two Justices of the Peace are also elected, to four-year terms, and typically set bail at first appearance. Neither is a Butte-Silver Bow government employee.

District Court 1

Judge Frank Joseph

District Court 2

Judge Robert Whelan

Justice Court (Department 1 and Department 2)

James F. Kilmer (Jimm)
Ben Pezdark

Still needed

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

Silver Bow County (Butte-Silver Bow) is the most transparent county in this group: it names its jail, publishes a same-day jail roster PDF, states its 2004 build year and 72-bed capacity, and gives clear bonding-out guidance, all on its own site.
A booking fee ($25) and a medical co-pay cap ($10) are published, and a commissary program is described in general terms, but no phone/video-visit/commissary rate sheet with actual dollar figures was found in text on the site, so the fees check is recorded as 'no'.
A site search for 'PREA' on co.silverbow.mt.us returned no results.
Montana has no confirmed statutory adult jail inspection agency; state_inspection is recorded as empty for this reason, per research brief. Butte-Silver Bow's July 2026 Colorado-style mandate does not apply here — that note is specific to Colorado.
Butte-Silver Bow's consolidated government is led by a 12-member Council of Commissioners, one per district: John Morgan (D1), Michele Shea (D2), Hattie Thatcher (D3), William 'Bill' Boyle (D4), Russell O'Leary (D5), Jim Fisher (D6), Josh O'Neill (D7), Trudy Healy (D8), Eric Mankins (D9), Butch Gerbrandt (D10), Thomas Walker (D11), Dan Callahan (D12). Regular meetings are the first and third Wednesday of each month.

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Silver Bow 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