A corrections officer is shown at the Florence McClure Women’s Correctional Center in North Las Vegas in 2016.
Monday, Dec. 24, 2018 | 2 a.m.
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In Nevada, a backyard shed full of rusty garden tools and a business filled with millions of dollars in inventory are exactly the same in one respect.
Breaking into either one carries exactly the same criminal charge and penalties, including prison time.
That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but it may change soon thanks to the work of a state panel exploring criminal justice reforms in Nevada.
The Advisory Commission on the Administration of Justice, formed by Gov. Brian Sandoval, has been examining the justice system since August with a goal of improving outcomes and reducing growth in the state prison population.
Among the commission’s findings thus far:
• While the prison population nationwide declined between 2009 and 2016, Nevada’s has increased 7 percent since ’09. In that time, there’s been a 20 percent increase in the amount of time offenders have served in incarceration.
• Forty-three percent of Nevada prisoners were sentenced for non-person offenses in 2017.
• Female prison admissions are up 39 percent in the past 10 years, with 61 percent of current female prisoners serving time for non-person offenses.
• Although more people are being sent to prison and being kept there longer, recidivism rates have increased for all offenses except driving while intoxicated.
“Right now, we are at critical mass in the prisons,” said state Assemblyman Steve Yeager, the commission’s chairman. “Particularly, we only have one women’s prison, Florence McClure, and they’re already over capacity. So if we don’t do something, we’re going to have to build new prisons, and then we’re going to have to staff them. And that’s where a lot of the costs come from.”
That’s where something like the burglary statute comes in. Yeager said Nevada was possibly the only state that doesn’t have different categories of burglaries, some of which carry lighter penalties than others.
Nevada’s drug possession statutes also have been red-flagged by the commission. Unlike in other states, it’s a felony to be in possession of any amount of drug here. And that means any amount. A first-time offender can be charged with a felony simply for having a trace amount of drugs in his or her system.
The commission has formed subgroups to explore reforms in two broad areas — pretrial through sentencing, and parole and probation. Yeager said the panel’s goal was to produce a set of recommendations for consideration during the 2019 session of the Legislature.
The work isn’t simply about clearing out prisons and reducing penalties for some crimes, Yeager said. Reforms are being balanced against the need to maintain public safety, with input coming from panel members in law enforcement, corrections and the judicial system.
The thrust is to make more efficient use of the money being spent on crime and punishment. That may mean putting more funding into programs to help inmates transition back into life outside of prison, mental health services and new options for parole or probation violators, such as inpatient substance abuse treatment as opposed to incarceration.
Meanwhile, the commission is working with the Boston-based Crime and Justice Institute on cost modeling that will include estimates of how much the state will spend in coming years if it maintains status quo. Those figures are expected to be available by mid-January.
“I think some people focus on the front end — the need to get people off the streets and lock them away,” he said. “But I think that kind of ignores the problems on the back end, which is that if you don’t correct the behavior, then they’re just coming right back out and reoffending. So have you really increased public safety?”
It will be interesting to see the commission’s recommendations, but here’s a hand to the panel members for taking on this important subject.
Nevada’s prison population is clearly going in the wrong direction, and it’s clear from the commission’s work thus far that there are many areas that need improvement. If Nevada can be smarter about its spending on prisons and the judicial system — and it certainly appears it can — everybody wins.
“From my perspective, every dollar we spend on that is one less dollar we can spend on education, health care or other areas where people say they want spending,” Yeager said. “We’ll see the projections, but I think you’re going to see a pretty dramatic projection of how our prison budget is going to increase if we maintain the status quo. So I think it is imperative that we look at this.”
Yeager said he expected the commission to send a “big package” of legislation to lawmakers, but said he was confident that much of it could be adopted during the 2019 session.
Here’s hoping he’s right.
