Plan clamps down on convicts

Larry Henry

Tuesday, July 2, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

Inmates should be working 50 hours a week instead of smoking cigarettes, reading racy magazines and watching cable television, two Nevada Republicans say.

Rep. John Ensign and state Sen. Mark James announced Monday they will seek federal and state legislation banning vulgar music, microwave ovens and televisions in prison cells.

The legislation would also require inmates to work longer hours and pay a larger percentage of their paychecks to victims. Inmates also would have to contribute more to room and board and to future prison construction.

Opponents are trying to handcuff the legislation by saying it takes jobs away from minimum-wage workers and deprives prisoners of constitutional rights.

Ensign and James say they are trying to instill a work ethic and recoup some of the $15,000 to $21,000 taxpayers spend each year on each prisoner.

"Prisoners sit around and think about the next crime they're going to commit," Ensign said. "They forgot how to get up every day and go to work."

Prison spokesman Glen Whorton said most of Nevada's 7,806 inmates work in menial tasks rewarded with good-time credits instead of cash. Those employed in prison industries, such as an auto body shop where vintage cars from the Imperial Palace hotel-casino are refurbished, work about 30 hours a week.

As much as 20 percent of the money prisoners earn goes to victim restitution and about 25 percent to room and board. The legislation would boost those amounts to 33 percent.

Ensign's legislation would prohibit conjugal visits, while James' would require "hot bunking," a controversial practice to relieve prison overcrowding in which two prisoners use one bunk in shifts.

Both bills would mandate random drug testing.

Ensign said he will introduce a bill in Congress this week that would affect 100,000 federal prisoners, including 485 in Nevada. James is developing legislation to introduce in the 1997 Legislature, which convenes in January.

Detractors predict the bills will stall in the face of resistance from labor organizers and civil libertarians.

Blackie Evans, executive secretary-treasurer of the state AFL-CIO, said unions don't object to prisoners "painting over graffiti and picking up trash" but draw the line when inmates take minimum-wage jobs away from "law-abiding people who are trying to provide for their families."

Evans said Ensign and James, a Las Vegan who chaired the Judiciary Committee last session, are telling people on the streets that "all they have to do is rob a 7-Eleven, and they'll get a job."

Other critics say the legislation denies constitutional rights and could imperil prison workers since cigarettes and other luxuries are thought to keep prisoners calm.

"They'll get ornery if they can't smoke," said ACLU spokesman Richard Siegel. "A guard's job is tough enough without legislators who have had little contact with jails and prisons making life more dangerous for prison staff just to advance their own political careers."

Siegel said courts, which have clamped down on some prisoners' rights, have been reluctant to limit what inmates can read or listen to.

"The courts have been protecting ... free expression," he said.

Nevada Deputy Attorney General Anne Cathcart agreed that definitions of pornography are "a little bit hazy," but she said inmates "do not have a constitutional right to cigarettes or cable TV."

"Those things are considered management tools," she said.