Young seeks special jail to be built for petty criminals

Stephen Curran

Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2005 | 9:56 a.m.

Scores of petty criminals who Metro Police say find themselves slapped with little more than a fine could find themselves in a special jail if plans to build a new facility to house them move forward.

But the new jail wouldn't resemble the Clark County Detention Center's traditional -- and pricey -- brick-and-mortar construction. Instead, Sheriff Bill Young, who spearheaded the campaign with County Commission Chairman Rory Reid earlier this year, is focusing his efforts on a 400-bed modular building on the site of the county's sewage treatment plant off Vegas Valley Drive and Flamingo Road.

Overcrowding at the 2,860-bed Clark County Detention Center now means few of those cited for prostitution, graffiti and other minor offenses ever see the inside of a jail cell, Reid said.

"The jail is supposed to be a place for pretrial felons and a place where misdemeanants can serve time, but the fact is that most of the people in there are either convicted of significant crimes or they're awaiting trial," he said. " ... We don't have the deterrent of sending those people away for time so they realize there's a consequence for their actions."

It's unclear what the new facility might look like or how much it would cost because it is not expected to clear a preliminary feasibility study for another 90 to 100 days, he said.

What was clear was, with costs for an expansion to the Detention Center reaching more than $66 million, immediately building a new "hard-site" facility akin to the old one is unlikely, Reid said.

One possibility is a tent-like structure with a "dorm-like"atmosphere that would differ significantly from a traditional jail, Reid said.

The county site, which sits in Reid's district, already has an unused administrative building that could be used for offices for those managing the facility, he said.

The land, Reid said, already houses the department's equestrian units and was a likely choice for the temporary jail.

Even if built, however, Reid said its long-term usefullness will be limited.

"I don't think it's a long-term solution," Reid said. "I think it's an interim facility. I think it'll serve its purpose but that ultimately we'll need more capacity for dangerous criminals. This will not be the place for them."

But it's a short-sighted fix that does little to address the underlying problems that lead to minor offenses, Gary Peck, executive director of the Nevada ACLU, said.

"It's really unfortunate that we find ourselves talking about spending still more precious taxpayer dollars on yet another jail that will not be the answer to overcrowding," he said.

Instead, a solution may lie in expanding what Peck said were successful but narrowly applied programs, such as Homeless Court or Mental Health Court, designed more to treat the problems that can lead to such "quality of life" issues, he said.

"They just don't belong in jail and in the system clogging it up," Peck said. "Instead of really addressing the problems in a serious way, what are we talking about? We're talking about putting up a shed somewhere to house nonviolent offenders."