Prisoners to make pub equipment

Thursday, Jan. 20, 2005 | 9:52 a.m.

SUN CAPITAL BUREAU

CARSON CITY -- A legislative subcommittee Wednesday approved plans to allow a California company to set up an operation at the High Desert State Prison to manufacture equipment for brew pubs.

"We are not going to be manufacturing beer in the prison," said Howard Skolnik, assistant director of the state Department of Corrections, who heads the prison industries program.

Skolnik told the legislative subcommittee on industrial programs that a company called Micro Brew Inc. has its equipment loaded in Santa Rosa, Calif., and is ready to move to the prison in Clark County as soon as the state Board of Examiners approves the contract.

The examiners board meets next month.

The contract calls for the firm to lease 10,000 square feet of space in a giant 60,000-square-foot industrial building inside the prison fence north of Las Vegas. It manufactures tanks and other equipment for brew pubs and has supplied two casinos in Clark County so far.

Skolnik said about 25-30 inmates will be hired and they will probably be paid $5.15 an hour for their work. The level of skills the prison inmates will learn will be high and they should be eligible for good jobs when they are released, he said.