Prison release delayed for want of pay

Wednesday, Dec. 13, 2000 | 10:30 a.m.

Martice Ransey had everything he needed to be released Monday from Southern Desert Correctional Center at Indian Springs after serving nearly four years for robbery.

Everything, that is, except the $210 he earned while working in prison. Ransey and his relatives told prison officials the missing check could be mailed to him at his cousin's Las Vegas home where he will be staying. Instead, prison gates were slammed with Ransey still standing on the inside.

The check snafu was going to cost 28-year-old Ransey as many as seven more days of freedom and would have cost taxpayers an extra $455 -- $65 per day -- to house him until his new scheduled release date, Monday.

However, after calls of inquiry, Ransey was given a check and released Tuesday afternoon. Still, prison rights advocates and prison officials agree that the policy that would have kept him behind bars an extra week needs to be examined.

"This is an outrageous policy," said Audrey Ransey, Martice's aunt. "Of course he is frustrated because he was told he would be released Monday, and then he was told he would have to wait another whole week."

Howard Skolnik, spokesman for the Nevada Department of Prisons, said he was surprised to learn it was policy to delay inmate releases if checks for the $21 in so-called "gate" money plus earnings were not ready.

"This is the first time I have run into this situation," he said. "It is certainly a policy we will have to look at."

Mercedes Maharis, co-founder of the Spartacus Project with fellow prison rights activist Donald Hinton, said Ransey should have been paroled on Nov. 1, and that the check problem was just one in a series of delays.

Ransey, a father of two, was convicted of unarmed robbery and sentenced to three to 7 1/2 years in prison in January 1997. Parole was granted on July 25, effective Nov. 1, according to prison records that list his name as Martise Ramsey.

"This type of thing seems to be a pattern -- it has happened in Washington, D.C., and other places," Maharis said of prison release delays.

"They had four months to prepare for Martice's release. It is a combination of incompetency and meting out a little more punishment at the inmates' and taxpayers' expense."

Skolnik says Parole Board release dates are not etched in stone. He said the Department of Parole and Probation needs to conduct careful investigations of where parolees will be working and living before they are let back into society.

"Each parole officer is assigned 165 cases, and it sometimes takes more time to confirm everything on a particular case," he said.

Ransey told prison and probation officials he initially will be working with Audrey's sister as an errand-runner in a financial services business and living with his cousin.

Audrey Ransey said her nephew took courses in prison that he hopes will land him a good-paying job either driving a city bus or working in the disposal industry.

This was the second prison term served by Ransey, who attended Las Vegas High School. During his first stint he got his high school diploma, his aunt said.