North Dakota Finds Option to Relieve Prison Overcrowding

(Photo by Michael Achterling/North Dakota Monitor)

(North Dakota Monitor) – North Dakota’s prison system will use the Burleigh/Morton County Detention Center to house inmates instead of using the Grand Forks County jail to address its overcrowding problem.

The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has agreed on a deal for 120 beds at the Burleigh/Morton jail in Bismarck.

The agreement guarantees that the state agency will pay for the beds, even if not all of them are full, at a rate of $105 per day or $4.6 million annually. The daily rate is less than the Burleigh-Morton jail’s typical rate of $115 per bed that it charges other counties and federal agencies.

The state will use the Burleigh/Morton jail for minimum security inmates and programming. The corrections department will provide case managers and treatment staff but the Burleigh County Sheriff’s Office is in charge of staffing correctional officers.