Rule would free low-risk inmates early

CARSON CITY -- Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley said Wednesday that hundreds of low risk inmates soon could be released from crowded state prisons if legislators approve a regulation change next week.

Buckley, D-Las Vegas, said the Legislative Commission will look at a regulation that would free inmates from having to attend Parole Board hearings in person in cases where there is no dispute that they should be paroled.

Buckley said the regulation would bring positive results from a law passed by the Legislature last June that was designed to allow early release of more than 1,000 inmates.

The law increased the good time credits earned by inmates serving sentences for crimes not deemed serious.

But Parole Board members have complained they did not have the staff to hold early release hearings, in part because of another new law that required inmates to appear in person for parole hearings.

In the past, many parole hearings were conducted without the inmate present.

During a Wednesday meeting of the Legislature's Interim Finance Commission, Parole Board Executive Secretary David Smith admitted his agency still has not hired additional hearing officers and examiners.

Legislators in November approved the expenditure to hire those employees. They would assist Parole Board members in handling parole cases.

"It has been five months," said a disgusted Buckley. "We are in a (financial) crisis and we have folks ready to leave (prison), but they can't."

"Things do not move fast in state government," Smith replied.

But Buckley said later that a "cure to reduce the backlog" has been found.

She said legislative lawyers, the attorney general's office and the Parole Board have drawn up a regulation under which low-risk inmates could decide against attending their parole hearings in person.

The Parole Board instead would prepare a two-page order releasing them from prison.

The prisoners still could request that they be permitted to attend their parole hearings. But Buckley expects few would because they might be released more quickly if they didn't.

She made the comments after a meeting in which the Interim Finance Committee approved spending $253,328 to cover food and clothing costs of 234 inmates above the projected prison population.

Corrections Director Howard Skolnik said the current statewide prison population of 12,995 is above the projections on which the Legislature made prison appropriations last June.

That is largely because the Parole Board has not been processing early release cases.

The prison system budgets $2.17 per day for food for each inmate.