As crime rates rise, Montana city blames arriving convicts

By AJ Etherington
The Billings Gazette

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A string of violent crimes in Montana’s largest city has illuminated a problem local leaders have been sore about for a long time: a disproportionate number of violent felons are being released in Billings.  Billings leaders have complained for years that it has has become a dumping ground for paroled and prerelease convicts, some of whom have committed heinous crimes in the city. One sympathetic local legislator suggested the state’s Department of Corrections just gives inmates “a bus ticket to Billings” when they’re released from prison or other DOC programs, The Billings Gazette reported. Keeping them off the streets has become more of a challenge with many of the state’s prisons and jails operating at capacity.