The number of inmates housed at the Flathead County Detention Center set another record Sunday night, with 128 prisoners crammed into the jail.

The jail census from Sunday night to Monday morning is two more than the previous high of 126 inmates earlier this year.

“Thankfully we’re not in too bad of a pinch today because we had a lot of misdemeanors come in over the weekend,” Undersheriff Dave Leib said. “We have a fairly large list seeing the judge today and we anticipate some of those [inmates] leaving. A couple are being transferred to the state prison and that will relieve some of the congestion, but it does put you in a bind for a short period of time.”

Jail overcrowding is an ongoing problem because the 1985 facility at the Flathead County Justice Center was built to handle 63 prisoners and now typically houses more than 100 prisoners nightly.

“It’s one of those issues we’ll be stuck dealing with for many years to come,” Leib said.

The upcoming summer visitor season worsens the problem, he said, because “there are more people who have the potential of winding up in our jail.”

The county recently converted the Juvenile Detention Center across the street into space for adult prisoners as a stopgap measure to find space for inmates. Juvenile offenders now are sent to a Missoula facility.

Although the county likely is still several years away from building a new jail, a Denver firm has been hired to explore the feasibility of converting the current County Attorney office space into an overflow addition for the county jail. Reilly Johnson Architecture will spend the next six weeks determining if it’s possible to use the 4,500 square feet on the second floor of the Justice Center for jail space. The County Attorney offices will be relocated to the renovated and expanded old jail facility next to the main Courthouse in mid-June.

A team of county officials — Commissioner Pam Holmquist, Sheriff Chuck Curry, Jail Commander Jenny Root and county Administrator Mike Pence — are in Aurora, Colorado, this week for a four-day jail planning conference offered by the National Institute of Corrections.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by email at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com.