The Montana State Prison

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Once the prison was at the point of completion, there were other problems that arose. Montana was granted statehood in 1889 and did not have the resources to maintain the prison. Even so, the prison was over-crowded and conditions remained unpleasant for most inmates. Eventually Montana did give funds to maintain the prison (also gave them quite a few new cells) although they had to be in debt to do it. 

However, the use of inmate labor for prison maintenance was a common practice within the prison to save money. Partially due to overcrowding and partially due to labor, camps were set up around the prison for laborers and by the late 1890s around ⅓ of the prisoners worked outside at these camps. The prison wasn’t the only thing they worked on, although it was a large part of it. They also helped build state buildings and other projects that didn’t have enough funding to provide their own labor work force. Resulting from this, the warden, Frank Conley, became very rich off of his unpaid labor force.