Jail overcrowding soon to be resolved

Erica D. Johnson

Friday, Sept. 27, 2002 | 9:57 a.m.

The Clark County Detention Center will hold tours for the public Saturday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.

The expanded Clark County Detention Center, which opens next week with a capacity close to 1,400 inmates, is expected to reduce the longtime overcrowding of Las Vegas jails, the center's director said Thursday.

The $67 million expansion is located next door to the 18-year-old Clark County Detention Center on Casino Center Drive near Bridger Avenue. The new facility will contain 1,372 beds, bringing the total number of beds between the two structures to 2,860. The facility will house both men and women.

The first inmates will be moved from the Henderson Detention Center into the structure's south tower Thursday.

Beginning next week, all inmates will be booked at the new facility as construction begins on the old center's first floor, kitchen and part of the second floor. The two units are connected on several floors as well as by an underground tunnel.

Executive Director Paul Martin said the construction of the 379,000-square-foot, six-story expansion was "critical" because the existing detention center has nearly 400 more inmates than beds.

The Detention Center currently rents beds from the cities of Las Vegas and North Las Vegas during overcrowding, at a cost of $50 per inmate. There are more than 4,000 people incarcerated valley-wide.

Officials plan to open the center's first, second, third and fourth floors immediately. Inmates won't inhabit the top two floors until April of next year, when two additional classes of Metro Police corrections officers graduate from the academy, Martin said. The ratio of inmates to corrections officers at the new center will be 64 to 1.

Each dormitory contains 64 beds with no barriers between inmates and guards, allowing constant supervision. Inmates with a history of violence or who misbehave while incarcerated are taken to a segregation unit with individual cells. Inmates housed in the segregation unit are required to remain in their cells for 23 hours a day.

Martin called the new center a "new generation jail," in which all services, including food, laundry and medical attention, are brought to inmates.

Inmates communicate with visitors through video phones, located in the living areas. Visitors access the phones in the center's main waiting area.

"When you reduce the amount of traffic in the jail, you heighten security," Martin said.