City & County Jails in Montana
Montana - Inmate Search - All County Jail Rosters
Clicking on any of the Montana Counties or Cities below will direct you to a list of all the City Jails, County Jails and Juvenile Detention Centers in that specific County.
Search for any jail in Montana
Montana county jails and state prisons
Montana has 56 counties, and the sheriff runs the jail only where the county still has one. Yellowstone, Missoula, Cascade, Gallatin, and Flathead have the beds. A ranch county on the Hi-Line often books into a neighbor, because the next town with a jail can be a two-hour drive. City police departments have holding rooms. They are not county jails.
Jails in Montana hold people before trial and people serving a short sentence. A year or less stays with the sheriff. A felony sentence goes to the Department of Corrections, which does not always mean a bed at Deer Lodge. The department has been holding about 600 people out of state, and another 50 to 60 in county jails, because the prisons are full. A federal sentence goes to the Bureau of Prisons.
Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge is the men’s prison. The older units date to the 1970s, and the count there sits around 1,600. A $300 million expansion broke ground in April 2025 and is meant to add close to 900 beds by 2029. Montana Women’s Prison in Billings is rated for 250 and has been at or over that number. About 50 more women are at Riverside in Boulder, and in July 2026 another 66 were still in county jails waiting on a women’s bed. Crossroads in Shelby and the Dawson County facility in Glendive are regional contract prisons, not county jails.
How many county jails are there in Montana?
Fewer than 56. The counties that do not run a jail contract with one that does. When a jail holds someone for another county, for the state, or for the U.S. Marshals, it bills a daily rate. A family in eastern Montana can easily be driving to a jail two counties away.
How many juvenile detention centers are there in Montana?
County detention and state commitment are different stops. A few counties, including Yellowstone, Missoula, and Cascade, run a juvenile detention center for a youth waiting on a hearing. Everyone else contracts. Pine Hills Correctional Facility in Miles City is the state youth prison. In July 2026 it held 29 boys and 6 girls, down from about 100 youth a decade ago. The department is preparing to move that youth population to Riverside in Boulder and use Pine Hills for adult women, under a 2025 law that put $250 million into prison construction. That move was not finished as of July 2026. Call before you drive to Miles City.
Search the county of the arrest. The listing shows the detention center that county uses, and Pine Hills or Riverside only if the youth has been committed.
What the first days in a Montana county jail are like
Booking is a line: identity, prints, a medical screen, a search, property bagged, one phone call. The person has not been convicted. The pod still runs on counts. In January the holding cell is cold. Food is plain, the uniform does not fit, and the first night is noisy. Withdrawal from alcohol or methamphetamine can start before the first appearance.
Deputies who apply the rules the same way to everyone run a quieter floor. Uneven rules are how contraband moves. Yellowstone and Missoula can separate by risk. A 20-bed jail on the Hi-Line cannot, and a full jail there means a long transfer.
Larger Montana jails sell tablet time, video visits, and deposits through a vendor. A small jail may still be a phone account and a visit through glass. Those privileges can be shut off. Each county page on this site lists the jail phone, the vendor, and the way to send money for that sheriff’s office.