Montana
Guides and facility information for the Montana Department of Corrections (Montana DOC), a small system of state-run and contracted prisons that scans state-prison mail off-site and schedules visits through ICSolutions.
Montana’s prisons are run by the Montana Department of Corrections (Montana DOC), a small system that the department describes as four state-run facilities plus a set of contracted facilities. People in custody are identified by an AO Number (the DOC identification number) and located through the Correctional Offender Network (ConWeb).
This section details the four secure prisons that hold sentenced adults: Montana State Prison (Deer Lodge), the flagship men’s prison; Montana Women’s Prison (Billings), the state’s only women’s prison; Crossroads Correctional Center (Shelby), a privately operated prison run by CoreCivic; and the Dawson County Correctional Facility (Glendive), a county-operated regional prison that holds state men. Montana Women’s Prison also runs a smaller women’s unit, Riverside, in Boulder, covered on the Montana Women’s Prison page.
Several other facilities are part of the correctional system but are not individually covered here: a network of assessment and sanction centers (such as Passages in Billings and START in Warm Springs), residential substance-use treatment centers, and prerelease centers across the state. Montana also places some men out of state at the Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility in Mississippi (a CoreCivic prison). Two facilities are sometimes confused with Montana DOC prisons but are not: Pine Hills in Miles City returned to juvenile-only use in 2025, and the Montana State Hospital in Warm Springs is run by a different department (DPHHS), not the DOC.
Where a newly sentenced person enters depends on sex. Men are received through the Martz Diagnostic Intake Unit at Montana State Prison, where they are assessed and classified before placement. Women enter through Montana Women’s Prison. Because of a long-standing shortage of prison beds, Montana also holds some state-sentenced people in county detention centers while they wait for a DOC bed.
Montana retains the death penalty in statute, but executions are effectively halted — the state has carried out no execution since 2006, a court enjoined its lethal-injection procedure in 2015, and a bill to resume executions failed in the legislature in 2025. The men’s death-sentence facility and the execution chamber are at Montana State Prison.
A few features shape how families stay in touch, and they differ between the state prisons and the contract prisons. At the state prisons (Montana State Prison and Montana Women’s Prison), incoming personal mail is scanned off-site by TextBehind and delivered to the person’s tablet, and phones, tablets, messaging, and video visits run through ICSolutions (with the GettingOut app). The contract prisons (Crossroads and Dawson County) run their own mail, phone, and visiting arrangements — families confirm those directly with the facility. Health care is provided in-house by DOC Clinical Services, with some specialty services contracted.
Use the guides below for the statewide rules, or go straight to a specific facility.
State guides
Visiting in Montana (MT DOC)
How to become an approved visitor at a Montana prison, how visit scheduling differs by facility, and the general dress, identification, and item rules to confirm before visiting.
Mail & Packages in Montana (MT DOC)
How Montana's split mail system works — off-site TextBehind scanning at the state prisons, direct-to-facility mail at the contract prisons — plus the rules for legal mail, books, and money.
Phone & Video Calls in Montana (MT DOC)
Montana's ICSolutions phone, tablet, messaging, and video-visit options, and how to set up and fund an account.
Sending Money in Montana (MT DOC)
How money works in Montana DOC prisons — funding phone and tablet accounts through ICSolutions, and sending trust (commissary) money to the facility.
Medical & Mental Health in Montana (MT DOC)
How health care works in Montana prisons — in-house DOC Clinical Services, some contracted specialty care, mental-health services, and the grievance process.
Transfers & Finding Someone in Montana (MT DOC)
How to find someone in Montana custody on the ConWeb locator, how reception works at the Martz Diagnostic Intake Unit (men) and Montana Women's Prison (women), and how the state's bed shortage routes people through county jails, assessment centers, and an out-of-state prison.