New director of youth facility named

Thursday, Sept. 25, 2003 | 9:02 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- A former police chief and now the second-in-command of a boys reformatory in Montana was named head of trouble-plagued Summit View, the state's correctional center in North Las Vegas for serious male juvenile offenders.

Robert W. McLellan will take over the $85,153-a-year job Oct. 8, Gov. Kenny Guinn said.

The state will be operating the 96-bed center for the first time. Correction Services Corp., a private corporation, ran Summit View until it pulled out and the facility was closed in January 2002. It has been in mothballs since then.

The state is currently sending young offenders to Rite of Passage, a program for at-risk and adjudicated youths that is based in Minden, and to correctional facilities in Tennessee, Texas and New Mexico.

McLellan is the deputy director of care and custody at the Pine Hills Youth Correctional Facility in Miles City, Mont.

State Human Resources Director Mike Willden said there were about a dozen applicants for the job. Willden said McLellan helped gain national accreditation for the Pine Hills facility.

Willden said the next person hired for the facility will probably be the director of facilities, who will oversee the upkeep of the center.

The plan originally called for inmates to start arriving at the facility in November, but that has been pushed back to January, Willden said.

McLellan was chief of police in Great Falls and St. Ignatius, both in Montana, and a deputy sheriff in Brighton, Colo. He is a certified police officer training instructor.