Saturday, April 7, 2007 | 7:18 a.m.
Crowding in Nevada's prisons has become so serious that the federal government might take over the prison system unless the problem is resolved soon.
At least, that's what a former top Nevada official said he has been told by Gov. Jim Gibbons and Howard Skolnik, director of the Nevada Corrections Department.
Peter Ernaut, one-time chief of staff for former Gov. Kenny Guinn, said Gibbons and Skolnik made the remark in discussions with him as Gibbons prepares to ask the Legislature for $300 million over the next two years, and almost $2 billion over the next 10, to build and staff prisons.
Is the reported federal threat a reality?
Neither Gibbons nor Skolnik returned repeated phone calls from the Sun.
The best guess as to how the federal government would claim jurisdiction in Nevada is through a federal court. The Nevada American Civil Liberties Union has been preparing a case against the state on prison conditions, but state ACLU President Richard Siegel said Friday that it would not ask for federal intervention.
Regardless, invoking the possibility of federal oversight would give Gibbons extra muscle in the coming debate over spending priorities. Harsh budget realities threaten to curtail spending for education, transportation and social services - and those interests are pushing back.
Lawmakers who have been studying the state's system of parole and probation say throwing up bricks and bars is too expensive. They believe the state has options that are cheaper and more practical, including backing away from some of the "get tough on crime" laws enacted during the mid-1990 s.
"Three hundred million dollars and more prisons is not going to solve our problems," Assemblyman William Horne, D-Las Vegas, said. "We need a long-term fix. And what we do in the immediate term is going to affect the long term as well."
Horne and other lawmakers, including Republican Sens. Dennis Nolan of Las Vegas and Mike McGinness of Fallon, favor solutions that include locking away minor offenders for shorter terms and creating programs to ease parolees back into society.
That means revising tough sentencing laws, finding transitional housing, such as halfway houses, and creating treatment programs for newly released inmates . It also means overhauling procedures on the Parole Board, which is one of the most underexamined public bodies in the state.
Two bills in the Legislature address many of those issues, including a requirement that Parole Board hearings adhere to the state's open meeting law. "We heard testimony of low-risk offenders in prison 'getting dumped,' meaning denied their parole, for no apparent reason other than the Parole Board saying, 'It's an act of grace,' " said Horne, chairman of a subcommittee that is studying sentencing, pardons, parole and probation.
Other changes include granting parole to inmates after they serve minimum time for the lesser felonies, such as those that do not involve violence or the use of weapons.
"We want to keep the really bad guys in prison for a really long time," Horne said. "We want our parole system to use meaningful criteria for granting and denying parole."
Siegel, a UNR political science professor emeritus, noted that Horne's subcommittee found that the recidivism rate for Nevada inmates is among the lowest in the nation. About 30 percent of the released inmates return to prison.
"The point was made that if they were dangerous and truly violent criminals or serious drug offenders, the rate would not be so low - especially since we provide virtually no services for parolees," Siegel said. "When they get out there are no social services, nothing for them. And still, only 30 percent go back to prison."
So who are all the men and women being incarcerated in the state's prison system - which had an average population of 11,700 last year ?
Siegel and Horne say they are lesser felons who got caught by tougher crime laws adopted in the mid-1990s at the state and federal level.
Today, conservatives in Washington, D.C., California and other states are trying to turn back the clock, acknowledging that those laws pushed by conservatives in the 1990s went too far. They cost tens of billions of dollars for new prisons, and in many cases, can't be justified morally.
If you think Nevada's prison system has problems, just look west. California has 172,000 inmates in prisons designed to hold 100,000. So dire is the situation that the state has been warned that if changes in its system aren't under way by mid-May, the federal government might step in.
So Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has proposed $11 billion for new prisons, state lawmakers are refusing to consider new "get tough" crime bills, and a proposal to release thousands of inmates being held only for parole violations is being considered. Also, more than 300 inmates have been transferred to prisons in other states.
California's problem is, to some degree, because of its role as a trendsetter in enacting harsher penalties after the murder of Polly Klaas, a 12-year-old taken from her home during a slumber party and killed by Richard Allen Davis, a convicted felon.
California became the second state - after Washington - to enact a "three-strikes" law, which doubled and tripled mandatory sentences for committing multiple felonies - even for drug users caught three times for possessing $10 rocks of cocaine.
Other states followed suit. Soon, prisons were bursting and the sound of prison construction could be heard across the country.
Outlined in a new book, "Punishment and Inequality in America," prison and jail populations in the United States increased nearly six-fold from 1975 to today, rising from 380,000 to 2.2 million.
At the same time, however, the nation's homicide rate dropped - some say it stemmed from the tougher laws.
Nevada's turn to get tough came in 1995, when the Legislature rewrote the state's criminal code. A three-strikes bill was signed, allowing three-time violent felons to be imprisoned for life, with or without the possibility of parole, or for 25 years, with a parole possibility after 10. Another bill prevented the Board of Pardons from reducing a death or life sentence without the possibility of parole.
Other revisions created mandatory minimum and maximum sentences, narrowing the latitude judges had to consider individual circumstances. Minimum sentences were to be no more than 40 percent of a maximum sentence, but for that entire minimum sentence, parole was an impossibility. Sentences were also increased for a variety of felonies.
Ernaut , a Republican assemblyman during those years, pushed for those stricter penalties.
"We were like everybody else," he said this week. "We thought it was a good idea."
Today, Ernaut is a lobbyist for the Corrections Corporation of America, the largest private-prison company in the country. It manages more than 60 prisons in 19 states and Washington, D.C.
The company hopes to add Nevada to the list, despite an embarrassing failure here three years ago.
During his meeting with Gibbons and Skolnik, Ernaut said , he talked about using a company such as CCA to take some pressure off Nevada for the near future.
"I think what prompted the meeting was that the governor has a good long-term prison construction plan, and a good midterm solution with a modular building plan, and we tried to provide some alternatives for a more immediate solution," Ernaut said. The company could make 450 beds immediately available in Mississippi and Oklahoma, he said.
Using a private-prison company to run things isn't new to Nevada. And it would not happen without bringing out critics.
In 2004, after operating the 550-bed Southern Nevada Women's Correctional Facility in North Las Vegas for seven years, CCA ended its contract with the state, saying it had lost about $1 million a year operating the facility, largely because of medical costs.
Critics said the prison was poorly run. Nevada took over the facility at an added cost of about $1.2 million a year.
Since then, as prison populations have continued to explode, private-prison companies have surged in popularity.
CCA's stock closed this week at $52.56 on the New York Stock Exchange, up 81 percent from almost a year ago.
The Wall Street Journal reported in September that investors favor the stock because "federal prisons are operating at more than 130 percent of capacity, and two dozen state prison systems are operating at 100 percent capacity or higher."
Ernaut says CCA, which is valued at $2.6 billion, has a service that Nevada might need right now, although he doesn't consider it a first resort. The first step, he said, should be to hand over foreign prisoners to the Homeland Security Department's Immigration and Customs Enforcement for deportation. As many as 500 Nevada inmates could fit that description.
At best that would be a short-term fix. But it alone will not head off the drive to spend $300 million-plus on prisons. To do that, Horne said, other options must be on the table.
Those sentiments are similar to those of many conservative politicians across the country who are caught in a squeeze. They want to be tough on crime, yet they want to rein in government spending.
Rep. Chris Cannon, R-Utah, is one of two main sponsors of the Second Chance Act in the U.S. House. The act would allocate $176 million over two years to provide state grants to help prisoners return to society.
Cannon received a 100 percent rating from the American Conservative Union in 2004 and 2005. His resume includes serving as one of 13 House members who prosecuted the impeachment case against President Bill Clinton.
In December, Cannon told The New York Times that "just locking people up" is a policy that is "fundamentally immoral."
Even deeply conservative Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator, had signed on to the Second Chance Act.
Skeptics say conservatives haven't found new morality on crime and incarceration. Rather, those skeptics say , the motive behind this shift in thinking is rooted in opinion polls showing that Americans are more concerned about health care, Social Security and affordable energy than they are about crime.
Which way will Nevada go?
In mid-March, the Voter Survey Service of Harrisburg, Pa., released a poll of 500 Nevadans who ranked improving education and public schools higher than reducing crime and violence.
In recent weeks, the state has discovered its budget outlook has grown bleak. Gibbons has ordered cuts and warned of tough times .
Public school and university officials have responded with sharp complaints. Las Vegas business leaders are pressuring the governor to find money for sorely needed freeway expansion.
Now add this : Gibbons' approval rating stood at 29 percent last month.
Will money for prison building go instead to education or roads?
Stay tuned.
