Wednesday, April 6, 2005 | 11:04 a.m.
Federal officials in the Las Vegas Valley say the area needs a federal detention center to ease crowding at local jails.
Currently the Bureau of Prisons has no plans to build a Metropolitan Detention Center in Las Vegas, but such a facility is on the wish list of the U.S. Marshals Service and other federal law enforcement agencies.
"It makes sense because of the growth of Southern Nevada," Chief U.S. District Court Judge for Nevada Philip Pro said. "We really have a cultural lag with jail space. It's kind of like having cars with no roads."
There are 12 Metropolitan Detention Center nationwide, and the growing numbers of federal prisoners in Nevada point to the need for such a facility in Las Vegas, said Fidencio Rivera, acting U.S. marshal for Nevada.
On a given day in Las Vegas the U.S. Marshals and Immigration and Customs Enforcement are holding more than 600 federal defendants and detainees. The federal prisoners are kept at the North Las Vegas Detention Center and the Las Vegas City Jail at a cost of $72 a day per inmate.
Those federal prisoners are taking up space that could be used to help Metro Police offset the overcrowding at the Clark County Detention Center, said Chief Paul Martin, who runs the 2,860-bed Metro facility.
Metro also contracts with Las Vegas, North Las Vegas and Henderson to hold about 300 additional inmates that won't fit in the Clark County Detention Center. Metro pays $50 a day per inmate to house the prisoners at the other facilities, but in July that rate will go up to $70 a day, Martin said.
The county's detention center along with the jails in Henderson, Las Vegas and North Las Vegas and Mesquite total about 5,100 beds, and at least 4,500 are filled on a daily basis, Martin said.
Federal and local officials agree that the only long term solution will be building additional bed spaces to house prisoners.
"We work to maximize the space that we have, but the community is continuing to grow and we are going to need to add facilities," said Mike Sheldon, chief of the City of Las Vegas' Department of Detention and Enforcement.
Sheldon's jail facility, located at Stewart Avenue and Mojave Road, is usually at or above its capacity of 1,200 prisoners.
"Overcrowding is really a communitywide problem," said Dan Bogden, U.S. Attorney for Nevada, adding that it is a problem "that is going to continue to grow."
Over the last decade in Nevada the Marshal's Service has gone from holding about 150 prisoners on any given day to holding more than 500. The proliferation of joint federal and local task forces, such as Safe Streets, an FBI program that targets violent gang activity, have increased the number of federal prosecutions.
There are also tougher penalties for federal law violations leading many local law enforcement agencies to seek federal charges when applicable. Twenty-seven percent of federal prisoners in custody in Nevada are charged with drug crimes, 20 percent for weapons violations, 15 percent for white collar crimes, 15 percent for immigration violations, 7 percent for robberies and 6 percent for parole or probation violations, Rivera said.
"We're making more arrests," Rivera said. "We maintain a very good partnership with the local agencies, but there is only so much space available."
The Marshals spend about $15 million a year housing prisoners and paying for related medical and transportation costs.
A 1,000-prisoner capacity Metropolitan Detention Center would not only take some pressure off local facilities housing federal prisoners, but it could also help with overcrowded federal facilities in the region, Pro said.
"If we had such a facility here is could possibly take on prisoners from parts of Northern Arizona and Eastern Calif, instead of taking all of those prisoners to Los Angeles or San Diego," Pro said.
Only three of the nation's 12 Metropolitan Detention Centers are in the West -- in Los Angeles, San Diego and Seattle-Tacoma. The closest ones east of Las Vegas are in Houston and Chicago.
Carla Wilson, a spokeswoman with the Bureau of Prisons, said that no new Metropolitan Detention Centers are being planned and that the most recent one built was in 2001 in Hawaii. She added that the bureau builds detention centers based on needs identified by the Marshals.
The U.S. Marshals headquarters in Washington D.C. has been made aware of the growing jail population in Las Vegas, but the President's budget does not include any funding for new Metropolitan Detention Centers, officials said.
"We know dollars are tight, but the process has to start somewhere," said Pro, who remembers when all of the federal agencies and courts in Las Vegas fit into the Foley Federal Building downtown 30 years ago. "Las Vegas is not going to get any smaller and the jail population is not going to reduce."
In lieu of federal dollars for a federal detention center, law enforcement agencies say they are working together to maximize the beds they do have.
"We just have to be as efficient as we can be," Martin said. "We can work to reduce the amount of time between arrest and adjudication."
In District Court the average time between arrest and adjudication is about a year, but federal cases can last much longer. Some of the alleged Rolling 60s gang members charged in a federal racketeering indictment have been in federal custody in Las Vegas since August 2003.
By 2008 Metro estimates that it will need space to house 4,000 people. The current jail can be expanded by two floors to add space for 128 prisoners, but that won't be enough, Martin said.
Metro is seeking funding for a new holding facility for those who commit low-level and misdemeanor crimes, that could remove 800 to 1,000 prisoners from the population at the Clark County Detention Center.
These low-level offenders and misdemeanor offenders could include those charged with driving under the influence or drug offenders. Those facing a short sentence of a few days to a few months in jail could be moved to the lower-level facility, Martin said.
The use of the Nellis Federal Prison Camp into a Metropolitan Detention Center might seem like an option, but Rivera said that's not very likely.
"All of the federal defendants being held by the Marshals have been designated as either flight risks or dangers to the community," Rivera said. "The Nellis camp is for low-level prisoners and does not have the necessary security to hold pre-trial prisoners."
The Nellis prison camp has been targeted for shut down by the Bureau of Prisons to cut costs, but that move has not yet gained Congressional approval.
One option that is being considered is expansion of existing jail facilities through federal grants, Sheldon said.
The funds would be used to expand facilities and also put aside beds for federal prisoners. Such an agreement is already in place at the North Las Vegas Detention Center where the U.S. Marshals and Immigration and Customs Enforcement have a 15-year deal that allows space for up to 450 federal prisoners.
The agreement took effect in 2001 when the federal government paid $5.8 million to North Las Vegas to construct an area for the federal prisoners. These grants known as Cooperative Agreement Plans, have been avaliable in the past, but no funds have been budgeted for such plans this year.
A third option is for the marshals to use available beds outside of Las Vegas in places such as Pioche, northeast of Las Vegas near the Utah border. The jail in Pioche has about 100 open beds, but transporting prisoners over long distances raises safety concerns as well as creating problems for attorneys.
Federal Public Defender Franny Forsman said that a new jail in town is much preferable to an out-of-town facility.
"Out of town is a nightmare for our office, because the cost of us traveling to meet with our clients would be huge," Forsman said adding that constitutional issues involving fair trials could come into play if attorneys could not easily meet with their clients.
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