Grant will help expand jail

Diana Sahagun

Wednesday, May 3, 2000 | 10:01 a.m.

A federal grant of $5.8 million will be formally received tonight by the city of North Las Vegas to expand its jail by 100 beds.

When the North Las Vegas Detention Center was built in 1992, it was designed to handle the inmate population until 2005, when an expansion would be necessary.

But the detention center has already outgrown its space, and since September officials have been waiting to hear from the U.S. Marshal's Service regarding a $5.8 million grant application.

Ken Ellingson, chief of detention, said the grant has been awarded and will be formally accepted at tonight's council meeting.

An architect has already been selected, and the new building is expected to open by December 2001.

Part of the existing jail will be demolished and a two-story building will be built in its place, accommodating 400 prisoners, or 100 more prisoners than the existing building. The addition will bump the jail's total capacity to more than 700 inmates.

In recent months City Council members have questioned the safety of the jail, which rents out beds for federal prisoners to gain additional revenue. With an average daily inmate population of 585, most are housed in dormitory-type settings instead of separate cells.

The jail receives $62 a day for inmates it houses for the U.S. Marshals Service, the state and Clark County, compared to $39 a day for local prisoners.

Despite the revenues gained from housing inmates from out of the area, the detention center still operates at a loss. For the fiscal year, which ends next month, the budget for the North Las Vegas jail is $17 million. Only $8 million was taken in as revenue, Ellingson said.

The detention center was thrust into the limelight in August when Timothy Blackburn, who was there awaiting trial on charges of robbing more than $1 million from a Bank of America ATM repository, was able to elude a number of security measures and escape.

His wife was apparently able to remove the brackets that held a security glass partition that separated her from her husband. The couple then managed to escape through a series of security doors without the notice of guards or security cameras that scan the area.

Blackburn later killed his wife and two young daughters before turning the gun on himself after a standoff with SWAT officers in a hotel room.

"Things like that are bound to happen in a place that is undermanned and set up the way it is," said Detective Michael Mac Ban, former president of the North Las Vegas Police Officers Association who resigned last month. "It's a jail, not a prison."

Ellingson said since Blackburn's escape the department has identified its weaknesses, adding additional cameras and changing internal procedures and security.

The new building will do even more in terms of safety, allowing officers to better monitor the prisoners, he said.

The new unit will allow 400 inmates to be monitored with the same staff levels because most inmates will be placed in four-man cells instead of dorm style.

Diana Sahagun covers North Las Vegas for the Sun. She can be reached at (702) 259-2320 or by e-mail at diana@lasvegassun.com