Miller urges prison board to meet soon

Saying that the state's prison system faces crisis conditions, Secretary of State Ross Miller called on Gov. Jim Gibbons to convene the board that oversees the Department of Corrections for the first time in more than a year.

"The impact of crowded conditions in our correctional facilities and the growing fiscal burden of the correctional system on our state budget demand immediate and ongoing oversight of Nevada's correctional system," Miller wrote in the letter issued Monday afternoon.

There is no set schedule required of the board, which is made up of the governor, attorney general and secretary of state and is the official governing body of the Corrections Department. According to the board's Web site, it last met on July 11, 2006; another meeting was scheduled for November, but was canceled.

Prior to that, the board had last met twice in 2004.

A spokeswoman for Gibbons said Monday that the governor had no immediate comment on the letter because it had not yet been reviewed by legal and other staff.

Miller said in an interview that the state's prisons are overcrowded, their infrastructure is crumbling, and the early release of some prisoners that is currently being done to relieve the pressure may be dangerous.

The board can't provide the prisons with more money, but it can examine different policy approaches, he said.

"There is a significant amount of taxpayer dollars spent on the corrections system, and the public has a right to expect aggressive oversight," Miller said.

One approach the board could consider is tent cities to house low-level prisoners, he said. Units similar to those used to temporarily house military personnel have been used in Washoe County for jail inmates with great success, he said.

Miller, a Democrat, denied the letter to Gibbons, a Republican, was a political move.

"I think it's my job to make public the fact that we haven't met in more than a year and there are a lot of issues that need to be addressed," Miller said.

The board, he said, should meet regularly in the future.

Corrections Director Howard Skolnik said that a committee created by the 2007 Legislature also is poised to come up with solutions to the prisons' problems.

"Due to the establishment by the Legislature of the Advisory Commission on the Administration of Justice, we have hesitated to request a meeting of the board ourselves until we have a better sense of the commission's direction," Skolnik said in a prepared statement.

However, Skolnik added, a meeting would represent "an opportunity to have the board approve" new administrative regulations developed by the department.

The state's prison population stands at about 13,000 and has been growing fast. The Legislature approved nearly $300 million in new prison construction funding, plus an operating budget of more than half a billion dollars for the next two years.

The 2007 Legislature took some steps toward reducing future prison populations, enacting a bill that gives judges slightly more discretion in sentencing and allows well behaved inmates to be released sooner.