GOVERNOR TOURS TREATMENT CENTER

BOULDER - Christine Sutherland has been locked up for most of her
13-year-old son's life.

A methamphetamine addict since junior high, Sutherland, 29, asked to
be sent to a meth treatment prison before one was even built.

Now, she is 80 days away from graduating from the Elkhorn Treatment
Center, a women's lockdown meth prison here, and aspires to the
"normal life" she has never experienced: a job, taking care of her
boy, making dinner after work.

Sutherland hopes to be one of the "ones who make it" whom Gov. Brian
Schweitzer talked about when he toured the center Wednesday.

Even as the rest of the country increased the number of people
behind bars last year, Montana saw a nearly 4 percent drop in the
number of incarcerated, according to a national study released last
week by the Pew Charitable Trusts. Montana's drop was the
largest decline in the number of incarcerated residents of all 50 states.

Schweitzer told the women here that facilities like Elkhorn drove the decline.

"We could have poured more concrete, bought more barbed wire," he
said. But that, Schweitzer said, would not have turned many lives
around and it wouldn't have saved state taxpayers any money.

Roughly 50 percent of felons in Montana have some kind of mental
illness, Schweitzer said, and 90 percent are addicted to drugs or alcohol.

Montana has two meth treatment prisons, including a men's facility
in Lewistown, and expanded treatment prison options, including a new
alcoholism treatment prison in Glendive. It also has added drug and
alcohol treatment at many large probation and parole offices.

The 40-bed Elkhorn center opened in April 2007. About 20 women have
graduated from the nine-month, intensive treatment program. After
leaving the facility, the women spend six months getting follow-up
care in a pre-release center.

Schweitzer told the women that he took a risk on them. Some people
have complained that treatment prisons are easy and, Schweitzer
acknowledged, some people will graduate from the program and fail.

"I promise you. There will be a lot more of you that will be
successful, successful with your families again, successful at work
again," he said. "Those are the ones we pray for every day. Be the
one who has your child on your lap again."

About 75 percent of the women in the program are mothers, said Sue
Carroll, operations manager for Boyd Andrews Community Services, the
Helena correctional nonprofit company that built and runs the
Elkhorn Center. The center tries to accommodate visits as much as it
can, she said.

Schweitzer toured the facility with four women being treated there.
They showed him their sparse, albeit comfortable rooms where they
rise every day at 6 a.m. They showed him the computer lab where they
get their high school equivalency diplomas and learn about keeping
a checking account, applying for college, getting money for college
and making a resume.

And they showed him the thick, black ankle band or wrist band each
woman wears that tracks her movements at all times.

All the furniture is made by inmates at Montana State Prison; the
meals are made at the prison's "cook-chill" kitchen and bused to the
meth facility. Their mattresses are 2-inch foam and, Sutherland
said, if their clothing comes between their skin and
their bracelet, an alarm may go off.

Dorothy Gorder, 25, a Bozeman woman with a long, drug-related rap
sheet, said she's been to prison twice, and the Elkhorn Treatment
Center is a lot harder.

In prison, she said, you can choose to do nothing. But here, "you
have to dig deep," she said. "It's very hard work."

The women spend most of their days in intensive treatment.

Gorder said she has learned that she is also smart, something she,
as a user since the age of 11, never got a chance to discover about
herself. She has enrolled in college and hopes to become an
addiction counselor and mother to her two boys, ages 9 and 2.

"I begged to come here," she said. "I wanted recovery."