Nevada prison chief seeks furlough exemption

By Cy Ryan

Wednesday, July 14, 2010 | 10:29 a.m.

CARSON CITY – The director of the state Department of Corrections is taking steps to hire more officers in the aftermath of a decision by the state Prison Board on Tuesday to delay closure of the aging Nevada State Prison in Carson City.

Director Howard Skolnik said he will ask the state Board of Examiners next month to exempt correctional officers at prisons from an unpaid one-day-a-month furlough.

On Wednesday, he set in motion efforts to hire 50 more officers at the Carson City prison and the prison in Lovelock.

He said the hiring of 50 additional officers should reduce the overtime that staff is putting in.

The prison board voted 2-1 Tuesday to keep the prison open despite long-time efforts to close it. Democrats Secretary of State Ross Miller and Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto overrode the attempt of Chairman Gov. Jim Gibbons to phase out the prison that was first established in 1862.

Masto and Miller told Skolnik to look for more money to keep the prison operating. Skolnik told the board that correction directors dating back at least 15 years have recommended the closure of the prison, which houses about 650 inmates.

Skolnik said training academies will be opened July 26 for new officers who are hired.

He said assaults at the Carson City prison have increased nearly 100 percent because of the more violent nature of the inmates and the old design of the prison.

Skolnik had presented a plan to the prison board to relocate 100 staff to other prisons in Carson City and Lovelock. There are enough vacant beds in the system to take care of the 650 inmates in the state prison.

The director said he must fill all the vacancies because of the possible danger to the reduced number of correctional officers. “We cannot continue to operate this way,” he said.

The Nevada prison system has the second leanest staff-to-inmate ratio in the nation, Skolnik said. The national average in prisons is 4.9 inmates per one correctional officer. In Nevada it is 7.4 inmates for each staff member.

Skolnik will ask the state Board of Examiners in August to exempt the correctional staff from the unpaid one-day-a-month furlough that is imposed on other state workers in a budget saving measure. He said Nevada is the only prison system in the nation that must adhere to such a policy.