State likely to run youth prison

Kim Smith

Thursday, Sept. 27, 2001 | 10:50 a.m.

Officials who oversee youth corrections in Nevada are likely this week to recommend that the state take over the privately run Summit View Youth Correctional Center, the state's only high-security youth prison.

Mike Willden, director of the state's Division of Human Resources, said Wednesday he looked at a tentative budget last week and is confident the state could run the facility within the same $4.3 million annual budget it paid to Youth Services International, even with significant raises for staff members.

YSI, which opened the prison in July 2000 on Range Road north of Nellis Air Force Base, notified the state in the first week of September that it wants out of its contract two years early. The notice came two weeks after the Sun began investigating abuses at Summit View.

Gov. Kenny Guinn could decide as early as next week whether the state should take over. The state has until March to take control of the 96-bed prison, close it or contract with another private corporation to run it.

A 15-member task force made up of state workers in the corrections, medical and food services fields has been researching the possibility of a state takeover for two weeks, Willden said.

Although Willden declined to give specifics, he said if the state ran the prison, the guards and counselors at Summit View could expect to earn wages comparable to those at the state's minimum security youth facilities in Elko and Caliente.

The typical pay for staff members at the Elko and Caliente facilities is $28,000 to $29,000 a year, or roughly $9,000 more per year than YSI is paying staff members, Willden said.

"Many times you get what you pay for, and I think a substantially higher salary will draw a substantially higher number of qualified people," Willden said.

Low wages are thought to have led to the hiring of young, inexperienced employees at Summit View, as well as high turnover.

By November the prison had lost 80 percent of its original staff members and by July 30 had been fined $41,500 for having too few employees on duty to meet required staff-to-inmate ratios on numerous occasions.

Turnover reached to the highest levels. The facility is on its fifth administrator, the equivalent of a warden, since it opened.

The turnover and poor training were blamed for alleged sexual and physical abuse of inmates and drug usage in the prison uncovered in the Sun investigation.

Security breaches, suicide attempts, attempted escapes and successful escapes were also documented in internal memos obtained by the Sun.

YSI refused requests for comment, both directly and through its attorney, former Sen. Richard Bryan.

State officials have said that at the time YSI announced it was pulling out, its staff members had completed 96 percent of a plan to correct the problems.

Although state workers are still researching the possibility of contracting with another private company, Willden said he is leaning toward a state-run facility.

"They haven't had a lot of stability in management and frontline staff -- but by the state taking over the facility, we could get the stability we need," Willden said.

A higher degree of accountability is one of the benefits of a state-run facility, Willden said. The state would also be able to make program changes more easily.

The third option -- shutting down the facility and sending the youths to out-of-state facilities -- is getting "next to no" consideration, Willden said.

Should Guinn decide to let the state run the facility, Willden said, YSI staff would probably begin "phasing down" in mid-November as state employees begin to "learn the ropes."

If the governor wants a private company to take the reins, Willden said, a request for bids would go out within 30 to 45 days and the contract would be awarded within 120 days.

"We would be pressed to meet the time frames in that case," because the current contract calls for YSI to be out of the facility within 180 days, which would be March, Willden said,

Although Willden was not director of the Division of Human Resources when the decision was made in 1997 to privatize the facility, he said state officials did not believe at the time that the state had the expertise to run a maximum security facility. The youth camps at Ely and Caliente don't even have fences.

Willden said he doesn't know that the problems at Summit View are linked to its privatization.

"There are certainly models in this country where private corporations have run good operations," he said.

Such facilities are risky operations by their nature, even when run by government entities, Willden said.

Former Gov. Bob Miller, who was in office when legislators agreed to have the prison run privately, agreed.

"You can't say those incidents (at Summit View) wouldn't have happened if it had been run by the state," Miller said. "There is no way to know when you are dealing with young criminals. They are hard core."

Miller said the state went with the best information it had at the time, and that was that a private, for-profit corporation could run such a facility more cheaply and efficiently than the state.

Assembly members David Goldwater, D-Las Vegas, Chris Giunchigliani D-Las Vegas, and the late Jan Evans, D-Sparks, voted against the measure when it was presented to the Ways and Means Committee.

"There are certain things that you just can't privatize," Goldwater said this week. "I think that the state, generally speaking, does a good job with basic services, such as schools and prisons."

The argument at the time was that the state should be run like a business and that privatization would save the state money, Goldwater said.

The state, however, doesn't have to run at a profit, Goldwater said. It has an obligation to provide care for its juveniles, even though troubled youths are expensive to care for, he said.

While there aren't many success stories when it comes to youthful criminals, Goldwater said the state shouldn't give up on all of them.

"It's our duty to take care of them," Goldwater said. "We can't abdicate that duty to others, especially others who aren't prepared to take it on."

The problems at Summit View "are yet another example of why we need to be extra, extra, extra careful when we look at privatization," he said.

Giunchigliani said that by privatizing such things as social services, the state is giving away a certain amount of accountability.

While privatization works in some settings, Giunchigliani said, many private companies are just "trying to make a quick buck," and that is reflected in the wages they pay and the services they offer.

Giunchigliani said she thought it "shameful" that state officials were aware of problems at the facility from its opening, yet waited 11 months to call for a plan to correct them.

Before the governor decides what to do, Giunchigliani said, she would like to see an investigation into the prison to find out specifically what went wrong.