Sunday, May 5, 2019 | 2 a.m.
Assemblyman Steve Yeager, D-Las Vegas, is trying to overhaul the Nevada criminal justice system in one of the biggest efforts of the 2019 Legislature.
With Assembly Bill 236, Yeager wants to change a long-standing statewide culture some feel is based on fighting crime with longer and harsher prison sentences.
That philosophy has seen the state’s prison population balloon by more than 900 percent since 1978, according to legislative documents.
“For too long in this state, it has been a punitive system,” Yeager said on "Nevada Newsmakers." “You commit a crime, we are going to lock you up and then we act surprised when you get out and you reoffend.”
Time served in Nevada prisons is up 20% and admissions are up 6% in the last decade, according to state data.
Nevada’s growth in prison population is the opposite of the national trend. Nevada’s prison population is up 7% since 2009, while the national prison population is down 7%.
“If our corrections system or our justice system was a private business, we would have closed it long ago because it is not getting the results,” Yeager, chairman of the Assembly Judiciary Committee, told host Sam Shad. “Taxpayers deserve better and that is what the focus of AB 236 is.”
Nevada’s prison population of 13,800 is expected to hit 15,000 in less than 10 years, according to Department of Corrections data. At the same time, taxpayer costs are expected to increase by $770 million.
“I don’t think anyone in the state wants to see our prison spending grow,” Yeager said. “If we stay on the course we are now we are going to have to build at least one, if not two prisons, in the next decade.”
The pending bill would save almost $700 million in the next decade, align punishments to better fit crimes and purge Nevada’s growing prison population of some of its nonviolent offenders, Yeager said. The bill, however, does not coddle violent offenders, he said.
“Obviously, there are people that need to be in prison,” Yeager said. “We know that. Violent people, antisocial people, dangerous people, they need to be there.”
The key to the reforms is an emphasis on mental health and drug rehabilitation programs for nonviolent prisoners, Yeager said.
“Mental health is an overlooked issue,” he said. “If someone comes into the criminal justice system, we look at the crime. We punish based on the crime, but we don’t look at the symptoms. We don’t look at what caused this activity.”
So far, there have been no floor or committee votes on the bill, even though lawmakers are entering the final month of the session.
Opponents of the bill include some Nevada district attorneys.
Washoe County District Attorney Chris Hicks has expressed concern about a recommendation to increase the amount of illegal drugs to qualify for trafficking charges from 4 to 28 grams, or about an ounce. Others are against lowering the threshold for a felony theft charge.
But Yeager said that “some of the philosophy here is to really align the punishment with the actual crime. And it turns out in Nevada, some of our crime levels are really low compared to other states.”
