Guinn’s new drug program for prisoners caught in ‘Catch-22’

Thursday, Oct. 14, 1999 | 11:51 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Gov. Kenny Guinn's much heralded program to release low-risk state prison inmates early to the supervision of the drug courts in Las Vegas and Reno is in limbo.

No inmate has been freed and none will be released until the Guinn administration can untangle a legal roadblock in the law.

The governor came up with the plan earlier this year during the Legislature, calling for up to 150 nonviolent prisoners to be freed up to 24 months before the expiration of their term. But they would be monitored by the drug courts, which required testing and therapy.

The theory behind the plan was it would provide intensive rehabilitation programs for the inmates and it would be a savings to the state to have the inmates out of prison. It would make more room for violent offenders.

Guinn's legal counsel Scott Scherer said Wednesday the problem is the way the new law is worded. Until the prison shows there are savings, these inmates can't be released. But there can't be any savings shown while the convicts are still in prison.

"It's a catch-22," said Scherer who has overseen the program. "We're not allowed to pay any money to the drug court until we demonstrate we have savings."

It costs the drug courts anywhere from $1,500 to $2,000 a year to supervise an inmate. The major savings to the state, Scherer said will come from not having to build future prisons.

"We save the money in the long run," he said.

Talking about the current costs, Scherer said the state must still have prisons and guards so that can't be computed into the savings. While there is cost of food and incidentals for inmates, that doesn't total up to $1,500 to $2,000 a year.

"There is not a lot of savings between the $1,500 to $2,000 the drug court spends and what we spend in marginal costs per inmates such as food," he said.

District Judge Jack Lehman, one of the key backers of the project, was on vacation and could not be reached for comment. Lehman said earlier that only 14 percent of those who complete drug court in Las Vegas get into further trouble. About 80 percent of the inmates released from prison are returned for some future violation, Lehman said.

Those who enter the drug court must submit to acupuncture treatments to reduce stress and craving for drugs. There are counseling sessions and urine sampling to make sure the person stays away from drugs. The program usually lasts one year. Those enrolled would have to find jobs and housing. But the judges told the Legislature they would help with those efforts.

The program would have been one of the first, if not the first, in the nation to free convicts early to take part in drug court.

There may be some ways the program can be started without the prison demonstrating it has savings before the inmates leave confinement. "We're talking to the federal government about possible sources of money to start with," Scherer said.

The federal government, he said, is looking at "a pilot program in Las Vegas and they believe the drug court program fits well with that."

There are a lot of people sentenced to prison in the 1980s and early 1990s who are coming out of prison, Scherer said.

"How do we make sure they have the best chance of staying out of trouble and not coming back to prison and reducing the recidivism rate?

"Some of that is intensive monitoring while on parole. The drug programs fit that well," he said.

A second solution, he said might be to ask the Legislative Interim Finance Committee to allow the prison to spend savings it has made in other areas of the budget. "We would not ask for any additional money but ask for the authorization to spend it (the savings)."

So for the time being, it appears Nevada convicts won't be getting the chance to be freed early and show they can be rehabilitated using the successful drug court program.