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Wednesday, August 14, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

EXPANSION PLAN SCRATCHED: State to save on prison construction

$49 million project found unnecessary

CARSON CITY -- Slower inmate growth and an increase in nonviolent offenders means that Nevada's 15-year, multi-million dollar prison construction boom finally might be over.

The end of the building spree will result in immediate benefits, Department of Corrections Director Jackie Crawford said Tuesday.

A $49 million, 1,000-bed expansion of the High Desert State Prison approved by the 2001 Legislature is not needed, she said.

The money, less about $6 million needed for some additions to the existing 2,000-bed prison, will be returned to Gov. Kenny Guinn and the Legislature for reallocation to other projects, Crawford said.

The agency wants about $12 million to build a 601-bed prisoner education camp, and Gov. Kenny Guinn said another $15 million probably will be recommended to build a much-needed mental health facility in Southern Nevada.

But projections show that the state won't have to build another "hard bed" for higher-security male inmates for at least another seven years, and an expansion for female inmates won't be needed before 2008, prison officials told the state Board of Prison Commissioners.

"That's extraordinarily good news," said Attorney General Frankie Sue Del Papa, a member of the board along with Guinn and Secretary of State Dean Heller.

Guinn agreed, saying the change in prison growth and demographics will mean major changes in the way the state funds and operates its expensive prison system.

"If we can go and not build this $49 million facility, this very expensive cell, and guard it, we can end up with some substantial dollars to build a mental facility, which is a very important part of this," he said.

A mental health facility will help the prison system by allowing it to offer appropriate programs and treatment, rather than sending the mentally ill to jail or prison or taking up hospital beds in emergency rooms, Guinn said.

Any money returned to the state may be used for other building projects, but because it comes from bonds, it may not be used to ease the state's current budget shortfall.

After the Legislature funded the construction of the first phase of Ely State Prison in 1987, construction of new prison beds has continued virtually unabated. More beds have been added at Ely; Lovelock Correctional Center was built and expanded starting in 1995; and work to build and later expand High Desert State Prison began in 1999.

But in the past year, inmate growth projections have been revised dramatically downward, prison officials told the board.

Rex Reed, administrator of the Offender Management Division, said that as of the end of July, there were 621 fewer male inmates in the prison system than had been projected only a year ago. There also were 114 fewer female inmates, he said.

The slowing growth of the population means that 500 of the 2,000 beds already constructed at High Desert State Prison are being mothballed right now, Reed said.

The reasons for the slower growth are not understood clearly, he said.

But Crawford said one reason is the use of drug courts, which has reduced the number of people going to prison with drug convictions.

Although the slower growth is one reason the state might go out of the prison construction business, the other is the change in the makeup of the prison population, with fewer inmates requiring highly secure traditional prisons with razor wire and guard towers around them, she said.

With the large number of offenders who are nonviolent, Nevada needs more facilities designed to return inmates to society successfully to reduce its recidivism rate, which compares closely to the national average of 68 percent, Crawford said.

Nevada is lacking woefully in these re-entry programs, she said. The first step in this new direction is the proposed 601-bed work education camp at Indian Springs, she said.

"Those are a different type of bed that will better fit our needs and our offenders, and save the taxpayers some money," Crawford said. "Hard beds are counterproductive to educating and training inmates for eventual re-entry back into the community."

The changes are recommended as a result of the Governor's Study Committee on Corrections, which issued a report documenting the need for change in the way the corrections system operates.