Transitional inmate center to look like college dorms

Beth Slovic

Thursday, July 22, 2004 | 9:22 a.m.

The Casa Grande Transitional Center, a state facility for male prisoners nearing their parole dates, will feature living quarters that look more like college dorms than jail cells, officials at the complex's unveiling said Wednesday.

The $21 million halfway house, expected to open in July 2005, is designed to help nonviolent offenders re-enter society by assisting them with getting jobs, saving money, staying off drugs and possibly reconnecting with their families, keys to keeping them out of prison, perhaps for good, officials said.

Designs for the project support that mission, said Irwin Molasky, the developer whose firm the state selected to build the center in southwest Las Vegas. The complex, complete with landscaping, represents a break from the institutional mold shaping prisons today, Molasky said.

The facility, deemed "well overdue" by Assemblyman Morse Arberry, D-Las Vegas, who attended the unveiling, may help hundreds of inmates get their lives in order each year, prison officials say.

When it opens, the halfway house -- in an industrial zone near McCarran International Aiport off Russell Road and Wynn Road -- will house 200 men. At full capacity, it will house 400.

"This is a project whose time has come," Molasky said.

Jackie Crawford, the director of Nevada's Department of Corrections, agreed. The project, she said, was cost-effective and may reduce the rate at which former prisoners return to jail by as much as 30 percent.

It costs about $16,000 to $18,000 a year to house an inmate in jail, Crawford said. But it would cost only $3,000 to house an inmate awaiting parole in the transitional facility, Crawford estimated. This is due to the fact that the center would have fewer security costs and because prisoners would have to pay $16 a day to live there, she said.

"Prisons are expensive," Crawford said. "We ought to do something different, and that's what we're going to do."

The Casa Grande, "big house" in Spanish, will also accommodate offices for the parole board and the Department of Corrections, making it a one-stop facility for offenders.

Only prisoners who complied with the transitional housing complex's rules would be granted parole, Crawford noted. Anyone, for instance, who did not get a job would be returned to prison, where plenty of inmates would be waiting for a spot at facility, she said.

Nevada releases about 4,000 prisoners every year, Crawford noted. Nearly 3,000 of those return to Clark County, she said.

The project, designed to prepare offenders for their release, was not without its share of setbacks.

Two years in the making, plans for the center changed a couple of times after residents fought the proposed locations.

Even Arberry, who on Wednesday pledged his support for the project, admitted he had strong reservations about Casa Grande when he first learned about it.

"This is not in anyone's back yard," he said, explaining his switch.