Guinn wants to switch male, female prisons

Wednesday, Jan. 24, 2001 | 11 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Gov. Kenny Guinn has switched directions and intends to reopen the state prison at Jean with all women inmates and convert the privately run women's prison in North Las Vegas to an all-male center.

Prison Director Jackie Crawford told a joint meeting of the budget committees of the Legislature Tuesday the plan is now to house all female inmates at Jean, which was mothballed about 18 months ago.

Guinn has proposed nearly $3.8 million in his budget to rehabilitate Jean.

Corrections Corporation of America runs the private 480-inmate women's prison in North Las Vegas. The state pays the company a certain amount for handling each prisoner.

Crawford said she has talked with the company, which seems interested in switching the prison to an "intake center" for male convicts.

In his State of the State message two years ago, Guinn praised then-prison director Bob Bayer for his plan to speed up the completion of the new prison near Indian Springs and then try to lease the Southern Nevada Correctional Center in Jean to other states. He said, "This idea not only saves money, it also helps turn a liability into an asset," referring to the Jean prison.

But Crawford said the prison encountered "logistical problems" in trying to lease out the prison. It was on BLM land, and there were questions if the state could lease the facility. They advertised Jean, but there were no takers.

Now, Crawford says she expects the female inmate population to grow past 1,000 women, and she recommends they be housed in one location. That would mean some women housed in Northern Nevada would be transferred to Jean.

Besides rehabilitating the Jean prison, Guinn is asking the Legislature for $49 million to build the third phase of the High Desert State Prison in Clark County with another 1,000 beds. This would bring the total prison population to 3,000 inmates at the penitentiary near Cold Spring. The 1999 Legislature approved construction of the second phase.

Glen Whorton, chief of classification and planning for Nevada Department of Prisons, said the men coming to the intake center will be "run of the mill" offenders. At the intake center, they will be evaluated and examined for medical conditions or mental problems. The average stay would be 21 days before the men are taken to a prison. Men who could get the death penalty for dangerous crimes would not be taken to the reception center and are typically housed in segregation in a prison before being booked, he said.

"No one will even notice a difference," he said of the change from a women's prison to a men's intake center. "It will be transparent to the community." North Las Vegas Mayor Michael Montandon, who in 1996 was president of the Hidden Canyon Homeowners Association, led the fight to move the women's prison from the proposed 25 acres on the northeast corner of Commerce Street and Gowan Road, north of Cheyenne Avenue.

It was eventually moved to its current location, near Lamb Boulevard and Smiley Road.