County officials led a tour of the facility— an eye-opening experience of the maximum-security side of the detention facility.

“That helps us maintain some level of security,” said Capt. Brandon Smart, detention facility commander.

The crowding gets even worse over on the minimum-security side, with 160 inmates in two sections with a capacity of 100.

“It just gets to be unsafe besides the overcrowding of it,” said Smart. “As you saw, we have inmates sleeping in bunks on the floor and one officer each to run each of those units, and we have to go through such a huge vetting process just for the inmates to make sure that they meet the criteria to be back there.”

The commissioners and the Billings Chamber of Commerce are using these tours to show the conditions at the jail and just how crowded it is.

Full story: https://www.ktvq.com/news/local-news/yellowstone-county-jail-expansion-could-cost-175-million